I use Gaim in place of MSN messenger, It's great as far as the IM functions but none of the MSN clones for linux can join the MSN chat network . . .is this true? Would I have to run Internet Explorer with Wine to get in or is there a better way?? Any help would be appreciated. This is the only down side I've found with switching to Linux and its a small one.

You could try using Konqueror, and setting it to pretend that it is IE on a Win machine.

Go to Settings -> Configure Konqueror... -> Browser Identification

Under Site/Domain Specific Identification click New...

Put in the following values:

chat.msn.com
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Click OK and OK

I just tried it, and I can get to the Chat page. I don't know if you can actually use it, but I would guess that you can. Of course there are always sites that use bad html that IE can parse but isn't standards compliant.

This trick is also useful for doing attachments with hotmail.

So close It got to the point of downloading the msn chat software (which i think is just a cookie with the chat .ocx) but it would progress no further. .Netscape Navigator should join the MSN rooms correct? I have a very old version of Netscape Communicator but it wouldnt join either.

According to the error page I recieve found: http://chat.msn.com/ns.msnw

You need Windows 95 or later as well. So I would presume its not going to work unless you have or running Windows and IE in an emulator or something along those lines..

It requires an ActiveX control. There was once something called reaKtivate, which let you run ActiveX controls in Konqueror. However, I believe it's bitrotted.

You aren't the first person I've seen ask about this. I dunno why they are so popular, they seem to just be like IRC except proprietary. I suppose if your friends are all on there....... well, try chatting to the Gaim developers. They are normally up for supporting a new protocol. I don't think it'd be hard, I can't see it being very complicated.