Hey everyone. is there anything such as MSN for linux? I would like to be able to use my MSN messenger on my linux box. Do you know of anything that will allow me to do that?

There's a number of programs you could use.

By far, the most popular ones are aMSN and Gaim -- both of which are easy to install and use (and most distros seem to come with Gaim anyway).

There's also a java client called Mercury. A bit slower due to its java interface but rich in the newest MSN7 features (where gaim and amsn lack).

If you want something more text-based, then there's lighter clients such as tmsnc and gtmess.

Note that there isn't an official Microsoft MSN Messenger product for Linux (although you may have some success emulating the Windows version under Linux, but personally I prefer gaim).

Hope this helps

where can i get the mercury client from?

aMSN for 9.1 here
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/sus.../rpms/SuSE_9.1

what about the mercury client tho?

Sorry, Mercury can be found here: http://www.mercury.to/

Not to make it too confusing, but there's also Kopete, which is sort of like Trillian (which I use when I downgrade to WinXP at work).

http://kopete.kde.org/index.php

The nice thing is that it is one client for ICQ, MSN, AOL, Y!...

I also use kopete. It has been a great app for me (a trillian user when on windows ).

another vote for kopete here

Obviously, kopete is for the KDE desktop environment, while gaim is for the GNOME desktop environment.

Mercury and aMSN are neither here nor there.

i use gaim as you can join a yahoo chat room, i dont think kopete has that or does it

anything to get cams/voice to work in yahoo

yaheilte works with wine pretty well if you want yahoo chat rooms but i dont like the idea of wine, if i want windows i'll boot into it

Gaim works great on my KDE desktop...

True true, but I was talking about the actual environment the programs were coded for. I'm speaking about a personal experience I had with Mandrake 10.1, where I used KDE, but I used Gaim as my IM program -- and no matter how themed my KDE was, Gaim wouldn't change theme (due to the fact that Gaim uses gtk). Yes, the program works but I never got gaim and KDE to play nice aesthetically

there is a gtk-qt-engine that makes gtk apps use the kde theme i'm using it now, it adds a panel in control panel> appearance and themes > GTK styles and fonts

http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/gtk-qt this program works really well with standard themes even firefox gets themed to your kde style and even openoffice which is cool. (the new openoffice beta uses its own theme)

Wow I did not know that! I'll be trying that one out soon, thanks