I hate chats, but I've been asked to solve this issue.

Well I made a guy migrate from windows to linux because windows became too heavy and slow, so he installed xubuntu, and everything is going ok. He used yahoo messenger so now I suggested him to use gaim.

The problem he has is that he cannot see his "hotmail" and "msn" contacts in the list of buddies given by gaim (he has an account on yahoo).

So the question is how to get his remaining contacts from gaim (or any other chat software in linux)....does anybody have a clue?

For Gaim (now called Pidgin) to work with msn you need to have these development packages installed libnss-dev & libnspr-dev. You might also want to check these:

>>>> msn account details for pidgin/gaim >
> advanced tab

server: messenger.hotmail.com
port: 1863

use HTTP method: unselected
show custom smileys: selected
proxy type: no proxy

thanks for reply.
I tried that but with this settings the connection is refused. The point is that the guy I'm helping HAS NOT any hotmail account, just a yahoo one. However when using yahoo messenger he could talk with some msn accounts.