For a while now i have been searching for an instant messenger that has both msn and yahoo protocols and have tried kopete but the newest version only works with kde 3.2 and was wondering why they do not make it for kde 3.1 but alas I have just found out that gaim does yahoo and msn protocols which i thought it never did, and it works on mandy 9.1. So why is it that gaim can work with mandy 9.1 and kopete 0.8.4 requires kde 3.2 nad above?

Kopete is part of the suite of programs that is the KDE Desktop experience. As such, I guess the new version of Kopete requires library files that are only present in KDE 3.2, therefore you need KDE 3.2 to run Kopete 0.8.4

I think that Gaim simply requires GTK+ 2.0.x to run (could be wrong there), therefore you don't even need GNOME to run Gaim, just the library files located in the GTK+ toolkit.

Mandrake 9.1 came with GTK+ 2.x, as I recall, which is why you can run Gaim, but if you haven't upgraded KDE, you won't be able to run Kopete 0.8.1

Hope this helps.