Just when MSN started to get on my nerves for being obtrusive and inefficient lay-out someone told me of the recently released Pidgin.
While his primary choice was to have a messenger with low ram usage, I preferred to compact look and unobtrusive handling of new messages.
In case you use multiple messengers you can combine them here into one window, and it seems you can even get on IRC but I haven't tried that yet nor do I think I'll ever require it as I have XChat for that.

For those who were familiar with GAIM, same team - different name because of legal issues with AOL.
http://www.pidgin.im/



The message window is even better. Text after the name, as many are used to from IRC. Some functionality is lost such as subtext and webcam. Both which I don't mind - and I'd have preferred a better display picture manager.

Tips for after install: disable sound, and enable logging. I like the logging mechanism of Pidgin, displayed as messages are with a working and efficient search function - the default MSN logging is horrible.

Yeah I am really happy with Pidgin. It is more stable, elegant, and just plain better than Gaim was.
I don't think I have had any problems with it yet. The last release of Gaim was always crashing on me.

I too really enjoy pigdin. I still use traditional msn more simply because I use my webcam a lot to talk with people who've moved away from here over the years, but when I'm at the office or elsewhere I love to fire up pigdin when given the choice. It's a very well put together piece of software. Gaim was always nice but simply felt a little shoddy but when they revamped it upon changing names it seems like they ironed out whatever small kinks were still kicking around with gaim. Great stuff.

I'm still using gaim 2.0b6 for 2 reasons:

1. Perl and pidgin don't function together on win32. That is, my perl plugins do not work.
   
2. The plugin i use most (OTR) does not work in pidgin yet
   

Until these issues are fixed, I'm sticking with gaim.

I guess i'm worse then. I'm still using gaim 1.5. Maybe because i was following the gaim forum for a while, and notice quite a lot of changes and breaking change from 2.0b3 to 2.0b6. So i guess i would prefer to let it settle down first before taking the risk. I really love gaim, so hope pigdin will do the same in the future

Yeah the last gaim was very unstable, but pidgin seems to be very stable. I haven't had any problems with it.

I have been using Pidgin since it came out and I have had no problems at all with it. I would highly recommend it anyone who wants to talk across many networks. My biggest praise of Pidgin is the open source. Because I research Yahoo! a lot, the source has helped me out greatly.

I never had any problems with Gaim 2.0b6 aside from the occasional (read < 2x per week of having it on 24/7) crash. I don't know what you were doing wrong but I'm guessing you have more than 1 version of GTK on there somehow...do you have GIMP and notice that it crashes alot too?

I first started using Gaim on Linux years ago, it was really cool, because I never used the original msn,yahoo,aim and etc. messengers before, but heard about people using them, at that time I was on IRC, but after registering and using Gaim, I started to sit on instant messaging servers, even though in my country it wasn't as popular as IRC and it still isn't, most of people use Skype, which is now full of "viruses" Even on the TV news it was talked about and newspapers wrote about it.. Anyway, Gaim was always stable for me, but later I found out that Windows also has Gaim, so the only problems on windows I had was errors caused usually by GTK.. I also used Gaim 2.0 Beta6 and had no problem, now of course, I am using Pidgin and don't really see any difference from Beta6, some new user interface and images, the functions are the same, but I believe it is very stable and the changelog is full of changes..

Some time ago, I tried original msn, yahoo, aim messengers and they really sucked, I uninstalled them as soon as I got time, so basically for me using Pidgin today is much better, more comfortable and resource friendly, you don't need to have so many programs running to be online on IM.. I also don't use Pidgin to connect to IRC, XChat is much better for things like that, on Linux though I prefer other IRC clients, due to I am using KDE, on Windows XChat is quite slow with SilvereX compilation, because of GTK, but I have a compilation which is using MiniGTK and I am quite satisfied with it. When you think about it, there is really lots of places people can talk today using the Internet I remember I was chatting with some friends on Worms World Party or some other Worms version online server chat

Both of these problems are resolved now...

The fix for number 1 was to download the latest OTR plugin (which came out about a week after Pidgin did). The fix for number two was to change my use directives in the perl imports from Gaim->Pidgin. So, "use Gaim;" -> "use Pidgin;"

I usualy use Mercury Messenger, but not at school for two reasons:
1) it doesn't work on our schools secured networks (tough pidgin and msn do work):
2) I don't like sending messages over the unsecured networks at school

That why I use Pidgin in combination with the Tor network at school . Luckily for me, Danny (the guy who develops Mercury Messenger) is working on proxy support

I prefer open-source Miranda for the time being. I love their approach, where you start with small, bare minimum and you can customize it anyway you like with a plug-in system. There is a huge number of protocol and interface plug-ins so you can face-lift the program anyway you like, and the protocol support is not limited in any way. Even in terms of a single protocol, there are usually many ways to interact with it. It's makes my life much easier, since I have to monitor 3 protocols, two of which would not be supported by Pidgin for example.

If you like the idea of Pidgin, but it's not enough for you, try Miranda and come back here to tell us about your experiences.

I prefer the traditional Windows Live Messenger because of real-time contact delete and blockage. That was the main problem in the original GAIM 2.00, it go SO annoying that's why I hated libgaim. Maybe pidgin changed that.

On Linux I use Kopete.

xboxrulz

I love Pidgin. . . I used it on Windows and now I use it on Linux. It's very user-friendly and, while it feels minimalistic, it doesn't use ridiculously small text or windows which got on my nerves when I used Miranda.

Additionally, you don't need to constantly patch it to remove adverts like you do with other IMs, which is a real plus, especially as sometimes the patching process can screw up if the release isn't tested sufficiently enough. . .

I really love Pidgin, looks a lot better and is more user friendly. I can't believe how adjusting some colors and putting nice icons may change a software.
I agree, now Pidgin is stable, 2 months ago I was decided to never more use Gaim and start using Kopete(although KDE),
but.... please I'm fluxbox lover(planing to use ion), functionality and lightweight is my criteria to use software.
Installation was incredible easy, just: apt-get install pidgin, old gaim packages were purged and then I started my Pidgin.
About troubleshooting, if you need to use Pidgin for your gtalk(only chat: jabber), choose XMPP. For some reason, that is the only kind of account that I didn't get imported from Gaim to Pidgin. I use Yahoo, MSN, GMail, ICQ.

Blessings!

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