Pidgin --> Unsupported
 

I was surprised after looking at -Current changelog today:
When i browsed the site, the information has been changed into:
I guess the people who wrote this are using old version of Slackware as Pat does creat true packages for Slackware and it's working up to now.

Well, since it's being placed in unsupported directory, i think i should grab the SlackBuild for Pidgin and compile it myself in the future (sad, but true)

bah humbug, pidgin is not any good anyway, they did not improve it from gaim-1.5 other than a little bit in the GUI no filtering for yahoo so every pr0nbot and spammer can flood your IM with crap, good riddance to bad rubbish i say...

I looked at Pidgin's wiki and that comment about Slackware had been up for about six months before people took notice. At least someone over there changed the entry today (presumably after someone complained to them after reading the change log). Now their wiki recommends that Slackware users go with the official Slackware packages which apparently just went extinct (and I don't blame Pat for doing that either). It looks like their wiki needs yet another upgrade telling Slackers to find some other program. I hadn't used Gaim in quite a while anyway.

Sounds like the pidgin devs don't quite know what they're doing (IMO). Everything I've ever tried to compile on Slackware has compiled, as opposed to ANY other distro, where it is much more difficult.

Whatever, I don't use pidgin anyway.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I switched to Slackware from Mandrake. I didn't want to deal with RPMs anymore.

They were trying to make a point (like the one Pat made about Gnome -- difficulty of maintaining), but their argument is a bad one. They don't need to bother creating Slack packages in the first place, as Pat does that job already. They may find the distro a bit out-of-date and dislike the hassle needed for a successful compile but calling Slackware installs "broken" and claiming that one can't create true packages (Pat can :)) were rather silly.

I don't use Gaim/Pidgin much (I use aMSN) but it was nice to have it available when needed for Yahoo etc.. Kopete is still there but I prefer the simple looks of Gaim to the rather crowded interface of Kopete (and yes, I like Gtk more than Qt). I hope Gaim/Pidgin comes back someday.

i do hope that Pat will change his mind and put Pidgin back in xap/ directory

pidgin compiles just fine on slackware-10.2 & slackware-11, the pidgin devs are lamers or ignorant because i did for myself how else did i come to the conclusion that pidgin still has no filters to block pr0nbots and spammers @ yahoo? (i did it and seen for myself) i let it install to usr local and made a symlink of libpurple to /usr/lib because it would not run from /usr/local. i could have used --prefix=/usr but i like to use /usr/local for testing things and if i decide to delete them it is much easier to delete unwanted files out of /usr/local than it is to hunt them out of /usr...

FYI, the thread in pidgin-devel about this issue:

http://pidgin.im/pipermail/devel/2007-May/000645.html

I was really surprised by this myself. The comments on the Pidgin site were really out there, and had nothing at all do to with what the page was actually about. Right after the Slackware rant, they list a number of other distributions they do not create packages for, yet none of them got a personalized flame like the Slackware community.

The new comment about not building Pidgin from source is just completely bizarre. If anything, Slackware has always been one of the best distributions to develop/compile applications on, since it is such a complete system from the start. No need to manually install the compiler or libraries like you do with some of these newer distributions. I have been compiling my own Gaim/Pidgin packages on Slackware since the 1.5 release, and every beta since then. I have never had a problem, and would never have expected to. I really have no idea what they were thinking there.

Besides, as already stated, the Pidgin developer's views have nothing at all to do with building a Slackware package; as that was never their task in the first place. Pat is in charge of building packages for Slackware, he isn't asking any developers to do it for him.

On the other hand, the same could be said for Pat's reaction. So the Pidgin developers don't like Slackware, big deal. It doesn't matter how they feel about Slackware, Pat can package any software he damn well pleases to. It isn't like they are refusing to let him download the source. There is no reason for Pidgin to become unsupported in Slackware beyond the personal grudge that Pat now has against the developers. Granted I can certainly see why he would be upset bu this, but somebody has to be the adult here. The current situation is pretty juvenile, to say the least.

That all said, I have never used the official Gaim/Pidgin packages anyway, since they lack spell check support (due to GTKSpell not being included in Slackware), so this really doesn't effect me personally.

I wonder if the pidgin devs will actually apologise for it, or just brush it under the table and try to forget it happened. The comments on the page were uncalled for and plainly rude, I agree to some extent that Pat's reaction was a little OTT too, but I honestly think I would have done something similar had it been me they were flaming.

I'm now giving kopete a go instead, and I might well stay there.

No loss for me either. I don't use pidgen.

What a crock.

I've been using and promoting GAIM for several years and am currently using Pigdin on Slack 11. It compiled fine and is working properly.

Since when are Slackware users a huge burden on any application developers? Are we flooding them with "I tried to install, but I keep getting this error about missing lib_foo" vs. say, the 'buntu crowd with "I clicked the little shiny thing and it just spins. What do I do now?"

Give me a f_ing break. I need to start looking for IM alternatives.

Patrick says he's going to use Kopete. Kopete is an excellent IM client. I've used Kopete and like it a lot.
I'm currently using X Chat and am very happy with it.

X-Chat2 and Kopete are both excellent apps. See also Konversation in place of X-Chat

There is no problem to compile it yourself. We have never asked pidgin devs to compile the package for Slack, because we can do it ourselves.

And, BTW, gaim 1.5 was/is way better for me than their 2.0 stable.

Seems silly to move it to unsupported just because the developers don't use/like Slackware and stated so on their website. I hate when emotional reactions affect projects. If there were some kind of logical or technical reason for it being removed, I'd be fine.

Pat saying that he doesn't recall ever doing anything to the developers is just silly. Of course he didn't, they didn't make any personal attacks. They simply said they don't like Slackware because it doesn't have "true" (to them, ie, dependency resolution) packages. I love Pat, but he needs to separate himself from the distro. Two different things.

I consider this to be very rude and offensive. I haven't seen any slackware users going around bashing package managers of other distros or bashing an IM client, especially one of GAIM's popularity. WTF has a package manager have to do with Pidgin? It makes me feel really angry, no one requested them to build a package for Slackware, and I compiled it just fine using a slackbuild from slackbuilds.org. Thank you for your rudeness and goodbye, I say.Off I go removing Pidgin and going back to Psi or Kopete.

Somehow I feel there's more politics involved here than meets the eye. Where there's hatred, anger, bashing, etc., there's politics.

who are these people developing pidgin? if they are not smart enough to install slackware & compile source code on it then they should not be writing any software at all period! i dont think i want pidgin on my PC...

I was installing current today from the "changes and Hints text" for the first time when I ran across this package. After I had gotten everything updated I checked the new changelog to find Pat's post.

I've downloaded and installed alot of distro's just to see what all the "hooplah" was all about but it's just hard to match the simplicity and stability of Slackware. Maybe I wrong but wouldn't the folks at Pidgin want everyone to like and use their product. If I ever wrote a program I would be glad to have someone like Pat with his reputation & dedication to include it in his distro.

My 0.02$
 

Like many here I too was completely shocked by this situation.

At first I said to myself, "well maybe the pidgeon people just banged out a quick blurb and then moved on". Then I read it again, and then noticed the time frame of this. It's quite evident that they have TRUE distaste (to put it nicely) for Slackware. I'm of the opinion that the original web-page was inappropriate.

As a result I will NOT use pidgeon; and they won't get my donation dollars until they make a formal apology. Changing the page does not undo the damage that has been done. I can't condone that hate speech by using their product until they apologize.

You know I actually went all throughout their site, and I can't see any place where they ask for a Slackware maintainer. Do you?

Regarding wether Mr. Pat V over-reacted. Well, he's got my support, and my $$

Let's face it, he eats alot of $hit regarding package management. But that page was malicious. You know, Mr. Pat V made a good point, the FACT that these guys can't get their act together to make a secure client is quite frightening. Because let's face it, most of us wouldn't even know how to write an IM client, but we have no problems making packages. Yet they can't do three simple packages over a full noob install? T Gosh I can smell the hubris!

agreed.
in addition he also cited security concerns; however no security update to gaim was made since 11.0 . on the other hand i don't really care, if the package is "supported".

agrees with Old Fogie, if it was not for Slackware i would probably abandon Linux completely for FreeBSD, i find Slackware easy to install/configure & maintain, Slackware is without all the cruft & kludge that totally turn me off of other distros, Slackware is clean & lean just the way i like any OS/distro to be, i hope Pat V. keeps the methods & tradition that made Slackware what it is...

Slackware is quite user friendly, just not idiot friendly...

In IRC, the questions I normally see are "why doesn't Slackware have a package manager?" when it DOES. It appears that the Pidgin folks are as aloof as the Slackware noobs when it comes to this (and apparently other things, such as compiling). I've built my own GAIM packages in the past...if a non-developer can compile Pidgin/GAIM with no issues, why can't a Pidgin developer do the same??? Slackware isn't any different than any other distribution regarding compilation.

I really think the problem boils down to someone not understanding that not every distro has to have package management with dep checking. It sounds like the developers are relying more on the dep checking than actual compilation.

I, for one, am going to support Pat on this one. When someone visits freenode's ##slackware and asks for software support, he/she is usually told to visit that software's support channel (#pidgin) for proper support, although we also tend to run interference for developers on the whole. We'll certainly help with compiling from source, but there is now a definitive line on this issue, especially with Pat backing away from Pidgin. While I don't expect the channel to be overwhelmed with requests for Pidgin support, it certainly will not dominate the channel's flow.

I'm so glad I kicked GAIM to the curb a few months ago (due to GAIM core-dumping constantly)...replaced it with Kopete.

Not that gaim didn't have it's issues with getting mozilla nss support first, and now having dependencies for gnutls. There was enough information around to get it put together and working.

But for the life of me, I can't get kopete to connect to any instant messenging server. It doesn't even complain, it just doesn't connect. So, so far I am still a fan of gaim/pidgin. It does work.

as soon as I read what the Gaim/Pidgen developers said about Slackware, I removed all installations of Gaim I used. I can't just support a project with developers saying that about my distro of choice. :P

Kopete is a better program anyway.

I would use kopete but the horizontal scroll bars look awful when a contact has a long nick or writes a long line of text. But if anyone know hows to fix that I would use it.

There are many many IM clients available:
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=insta...&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

Not sure how good most are ... I guess you gotta go try some.

There is now an unsupported pidgin package for Slackware 11.0 (and -current as well, if you change 'stable' to 'current in the URL') at http://slackware.osuosl.org/unsupported/pidgin/stable/ . Don't know if this is mirrored to other servers as well but at least OSUOSL has it.

Both mozilla-nss-3.11.4-i486-1_slack11.0.tgz and pidgin-2.0.0-i486-1_slack11.0.tgz need to be upgraded/installed (and don't forget to remove your gaim package first!)

Eric

Was Pat getting any help from gaim/pidgin dev team, if now it is so important that gaim/pidgin became unsupported. When did they support it especially for Slack.

This statement has the same importance as the gaim is not supported for Alien Hominid Linux, because we don't use it, so it's lame if we don't,despite I've never asked any help and it compiles correctly.

Nobody asks them to build packages, there are distro devs for this job(it doesn't matter if distro is either gentoo, or debian, or suse, or slack).

This post has a bit of background on this Pidgin issue...
http://lists.slackbuilds.org/piperma...ay/000464.html

So pidgin support is dropped not because of an argument between Pat and pidgin devs, but due to pidgin reliance on "obsolete" and their own modified mozilla-nss sources. Am I correct?

However, that does not explain why pidgin devs have accused Slackware of being "lame" OS.

I think that's an oversimplification at best, and in some part, incorrect.
Pidgin has not modified mozilla-nss - it does, however, seem that they're expecting a nonstandard mozilla-nss (probably something that their "chosen" distros do to it). Note that this *seems* to be the case, but the Pidgin devs are stating otherwise, so do your own research and come to your own conclusion.
As for why Pat dropped pidgin into unsupported/ - the emotions and reasons involved are either obvious and/or speculative (some combination of the two). You'd have to ask Pat for any more than that, and I honestly don't recommend asking him -- he's almost certainly not going to reply to a gazillion emails on the subject, so you'd be wasting both your time and his time.

Please. Don't fool yourself, there weren't any "security issues" with Gaim before the developers said they didn't like Slackware because of its package management. This whole ordeal is just stupid, Gaim is one of the best GTK-based IM clients available, and last time I checked, every developer and every distro creator didn't necessarily have to like one another's work for their projects to go together. If that were the case, open source software would crash and burn tomorrow.

I'm going to keep using Slackware because I like it. I'm going to keep using Gaim because I like it. The fact that the Gaim developers hate my distro of choice means utterly nothing to me: I probably don't like theirs, either. Pat either needs to stop overreacting and just put the package back in and not drop something that's been in Slackware for years just because someone said something he doesn't like about his distro, or he needs to at least replace it with something GTK-based. Kopete is great, if you're using KDE or have the libs installed.

Speaking of which, Pat said some pretty harsh things about GNOME back in the day too, and dropped support. I guess that means I should've have uninstalled Slackware since that's my desktop of choice.

I love OSS, but I can do without the stupid soap operas and people's personal pride being directly tied to their distro of choice.

shadin, bah humbug! phooey on gaim/pidon! ;p

@shadin - GAIM is a great client, there is no doubt. But I am somewhat confused by your term "soap opera". Slackware is pretty much a one-man-job, so I can understand Pat dropping GNOME, but dropping Pidgin wasn't (in my opinion) done because Pat was offended, but because their statement was fairly harsh. I'm not a GNOME or GTK2 fan, but I won't say that GNOME sucks or that GAIM sucks. I also won't say that "I actively dislike a distribution" simply because I don't use it. Just because you can't respond to mails from users by typing "You need to type: sudo apt-get install gnutls libgcrypt libgpg-error" does not mean that a distribution's install is "broken". It's simply not fair to put out that kind of a statement, after all-if you don't like it, you don't have to use it, but i don't see the need in bashing Slackware just because of the way it works. It-s not hard to list the dependancies on the main page and put a disclaimer that there will be no official packages for Slackware, so I don't see the need for hammering of Slackware that Pidgin's developers have shown. Just my 2c :)

So noted. ;p

But WAS their statement harsh? They voiced an opinion about a distro and why they don't provide packages for it.

Let's look at this. None of the developers use Slackware. Several of them dislike the distro because of history of broken installs and non-existant package management. Okay, I don't know what they mean by history of broken installs, as that's a bit too vague (and I doubt anyone has asked them to actually clarify). The package management, though, sure. Someone that uses distros with dep-resolution exclusively would think that Slackware packages came over on the Ark. The fact that they don't consider them "true" packages, I can understand, as they're basically just zip files with pkgtool to keep track of where the files are unzipped to.

I just don't understand how those two sentences are so inflammatory that suddenly Pidgin is ripped from Slackware and all Slack fans feel obligated to uninstall the program. That's precisely what I mean by "soap opera". God forbid anyone dislike Slackware.

I think by broken installs they mean someone has installed gaim on their computer without the required deps (or somesuch) and has then asked the gaim folks for assistance. It appears they are resentful that we don't provide automatic dependancy resolution, and feel that it is therefore Slackware's fault (and not the fault of those users) that their time has been wasted.

Or at least that's my take on it, could be wrong.

I believe you all haven't read rworkman post and link. When you read, you will understand that there is problem in building pidgin without changing mozilla-nss. We all know that Pat doesn't like modifying original packages. As well, he doesn't want to add extra dependencies of gnutls just for pidgin.


And, btw, can anybody patch the pidgin that it could work in default Slack? It won't be official, but available in repos. And the problem will be over.

Considering that they don't release packages for anything but Fedora Core and Red Hat, yet no other distribution got a little personal flame, I would say yes. If they put their opinion for every distribution the developers ever used on that page, maybe that would be another situation entirely. But it would also be completely unprofessional and, again, pointless as it has no bearing on the topic being addressed on said page.

Right below the Slackware entry, they have:

Not:

It is one thing to not have developers using a particular distribution, that is naturally understandable. Going farther, I have no problem with developers saying "We have no developers using distribution xxxx, so can't build binaries for it", that is also completely understandable. But beyond that, any other comment about the issue is simply needless mudslinging. Which, as we are clearly experiencing currently, stirs up a whole lot of negative emotion on the part of all parties involved, and is totally counterproductive for the open source community.

The point here is that it doesn't matter why they aren't building Slackware packages, simply because nobody has asked (or, arguably, cares). It was sufficient for them to just say they don't have a Slackware build environment (which was apparently suitable enough for them to do for every other distribution in the world), no need to elaborate on why they don't have a Slackware build environment, or their thoughts about anyone else using their software on Slackware.

Pat has packages for both stable (11.0) and -current here:
http://slackware.osuosl.org/unsupported/pidgin/

The thing was, why were they even doing this when Pat was doing it? Was it because noobs kept whining to them about providing a Slack package? That appears to be the case. Why else would they even be complaining? Also, I fail to see what the big deal is. Building a GAIM package isn't really rocket science...I'd expect more from guys so intimate with code. They've become too reliant on package managers that automate dep checking instead of understanding what goes on behind the scenes. They also have to realize that Pat is trying to update Slackware...its a moving target just as the other distros are, so why pick on Slackware in particular? Maybe because they're a bit aloof about raw (read REAL) distros...dunno.

Their opinion is their own, but what they said was a bit of B.S. Before making such opinions, maybe they should have attempted to make a better attempt at trying to understand what was going on.

I don't think Pat went overboard. It's obvious they don't understand what they're complaining about and made some bad comments. Yes, they were bad because they were assuming, and we all know that saying about the word ASSUMPTION.

From slack current changelog

http://slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=i386:

to which the xmms team replied http://www.xmms.org/:

hmmm, one of the longest running applications seemed to like us and had nothing but great things to say.

Too bad pidgin dev's didn't IM the xmms team for /dev/support :D

I still use xmms (and will until xmms2 will be available). There was no problem to get it running.

Hey guys. Read this post last week, and finally though of something. Why all of this drama over an IM that isn't an official package?

Remember, there is Kopete, which is part of KDE, which is an officla package for Slackware.

I did install Pidgin, and will play with it when I get time. But will probably start to use Kopete, cause it is an official package.

later

Because it was an official package until a week or two ago. (Well, Gaim was an official package and Pidgin is the same as Gaim, rebranded...)

Huh? That is some really interesting logic you have there.

Get slackbuild for pidgin. There won't be new versions of Pidgin in Slack.

Says who?

Anyway, I suggest you have a good look at SIM-IM which is a nice replacement for Gaim/Pidgin. It is multi-protocol (yahoo, jabber, msn, icq/aim, livejournal), does not use GTK but Qt for it's GUI and supports GPG encrypted communication.
I built a package for Slackware 11.0 which I put here: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/sim-im/ I used it for a while and was pretty pleased with it's looks and functionality.

Eric