[HN Gopher] Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client ___________________________________________________________________ Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client Author : thunderbong Score : 200 points Date : 2022-03-25 14:49 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (pidgin.im) (TXT) w3m dump (pidgin.im) | sequoia wrote: | Q: What happened to Pidgin? A: Google & Facebook shut down their | XMPP gateways to force you into their apps. All the sudden you | can no longer use Pidgin to communicate with people on google & | facebook. At least that was my experience. | | I used to use Pidgin with OTR[0] for e2e encrypted chat over | google & facebook. It was pretty fantastic, messages were | inaccessible to facebook and google even with a court order so I | didn't need to trust them. | | Also used Finch for a bit[1]. For a time I had a pretty great | setup on a local VM (running the PHP app I was working on): one | tmux tab with work, another with a pane for finch (for chatting | on FB & google), a pane for IRC, and a third pane for ttytter[2], | the amazing twitter CLI. If someone nontechnical walked by they'd | see a terminal and it looked exactly like I was working, not | chatting on IRC & facebook, and looking at twitter :D | | 0: https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ 1: | https://www.systutorials.com/docs/linux/man/1-finch/ 2: | https://www.floodgap.com/software/ttytter/ | paulryanrogers wrote: | Plus one for OTR. It was a bit awkward to do key exchange and | validation but otherwise great once set. | eimrine wrote: | I love Pidgin. If I want a secure chat between 2 I will forse my | buddy to go XMPP OTR | zaik wrote: | You should also checkout OMEMO which is based on the Signal | protocol and allows things like group chat and sending messages | to contacts who are offline. | eimrine wrote: | I have tried Matrix not on my wish but it has not worked. | Also I like Tox but it needs processor with hardware | cryptography and have not use it a long time. | zaik wrote: | OMEMO is an XMPP extension: https://omemo.top/ | anthk wrote: | Bitlbee + libpurple has the best of both worlds. | tuckerpo wrote: | I used to work a little bit on Pidgin. A lot of the core | maintainers have moved on. I think it's just grim (Gary Kramlich) | at this point. It's very clean C if you're interested in | contributing to an open source project. | l72 wrote: | I use pidgin daily with the libpurple-slack connector. It isn't | super great for large rooms (I often keep Slack open in the | background but have no notifications enabled), but it is really | nice for direct messages, which is what mostly happens on slack | in my company. Pidgin integrates nicely into gnome-shell's | notifications, allowing me to quickly see messages and reply | without losing focus. | cbm-vic-20 wrote: | The lead maintainer of Pidgin (Gary Kramlich) frequently | livestreams his work on Twitch. | | https://twitch.tv/rw_grim | arminiusreturns wrote: | Weechat is pidgin for terminal. Check it out also if you pull | together disparate systems. | xnx wrote: | Though it's often derided on HN, scree-scraping is the | integration method that requires the list cooperation from the | other party. I'd love to have something like Pidgin that ran | stock copies of these messaging apps in their own virtual | machines and aggregated the data. | dybber wrote: | Not necessary, new EU regulation forces them to make their | messaging services interoperable: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30798850 | inops wrote: | That will take years to be heeded, I'm sure. Even then, it's | possible some companies will provide that access only to | customers from the EU (given it removes the monopoly these | companies hold on their services). | phone8675309 wrote: | Forces them to make them interoperable in Europe. I'm sure | they'll drag their feet and then use some fuckery in the rest | of the world to avoid it. | pie_flavor wrote: | Is pidgin's Discord experience anything to write home about? | forty wrote: | Aaah I used it a long time ago, it was then called Gaim I | believe. | | I also used the similarly named but jabber only Gajim. | | Good times :) | [deleted] | nocman wrote: | Interesting, I did not remember that it was once called Gaim. | dmead wrote: | it was for sure called gaim. one of the only usable aim | clients that worked on linux in the 90s. | chipx86 wrote: | Indeed. Originally it was "GAIM" (due to the original purpose | being a GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger client), which AOL wasn't | thrilled about. We changed it to "Gaim", which I think they had | less of a problem with, or at least we had hoped they would. | | Internally at least, we called it "Gaim's An Instant | Messenger". I'm not sure if we formalized that or not. It's | been too long. | | And then to fully move away from that branding situation, it | was renamed to Pidgin. This was mid-2000s, after I moved away | from the project, so I don't have any insight into the name | change beyond the history. | | Good times for sure! | khc wrote: | Hi chipx86! I remember "Gaim's An Instant Messenger" used to | be on the old website but either google or my memory is | failing me. | somethingsome wrote: | The plugin to connect Pidgin and Meta/Facebook messenger is | dying. I think Pidgin may lose a lot of users if this in not | solved. | | If someone want to help them : | | - https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook/issues/526 | | - https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook/issues/518 | greatquux wrote: | yeah, i do hope someone can do this. unfortunately i cannot but | it is awesome. | 88840-8855 wrote: | I did pidgin and before that Trillian, Miranda and Disgby. | | It would be great to see an integrated chat app. | | For me Telegram is the king of today's UI, hence, it would be | amazing to see them integrating Skype (still using it) and | whatsapp. Line and wechat integration would also be super. | | This new European law that is about being passed gives me hope. | mdasen wrote: | I really miss Adium (https://adium.im) which was based on | Pidgin's libpurple. Adium had such a great user experience. It | was built with native widgets and also incorporated chat themes | that were implemented using WebKit's rendering (https://www.adium | xtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=...). It was fast and | memory friendly given that it was a native app and the themes | were just small templates offering a different rendering style | (rather than the entire app being a huge JS/HTML/CSS React app). | | There were add-ons for message styles, contact list styles, dock | icons, sounds, and more. | | It's really sad that we've lost the ability to connect to so many | of the services we use with third party clients. Instead, I now | have FB Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Signal all | running and taking up space in my dock. | kitsunesoba wrote: | There also used to be plugins for iChat (which later became | Messages) that added support for MSN Messenger, making for a | no-fuss nicely streamlined chat experience across a decent | range of networks (AIM, XMPP/Gchat, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN | Messenger). | | So between modded iChat and Adium, on Mac OS you had the choice | between minimal and kitchen-sink style IM clients, both of | which were free and had no ads. OS X had also hit peak | refinement around that time, between 10.2 and 10.6. It was a | brief but golden age for Mac users with a lot of IM friends. | fumar wrote: | How did I forget about iChat? That brings back memories. Mac | 10.4 to 10.6 was glorious. The walled gardens got higher and | less fun over the 2010's. Discord works but I am probably one | generation too old to appreciate the meme-heavy communication | style. | eddieroger wrote: | iChat had multi-party video calls and virtual backgrounds | in 2008. It blows my mind when Apple talks about multi- | party FaceTime calls like it's a new feature. | lopis wrote: | We had actual video phone calls in 2005, and with the | advent of Smartphones they were essentially deprecated. | Eventually, Smartphones became capable of making video | calls over the Internet with 3G | hans1729 wrote: | > Instead, I now have FB Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, | Discord, and Signal all running and taking up space in my dock. | | Why don't you use a matrix client with bridges? I use telegram, | WhatsApp and signal over Element. The bridges are not as great | as the individual clients, but it's definitely miles ahead of | using five messaging apps. | phone8675309 wrote: | Honest question: when registering for those bridges is it | just as simple as putting in your username/password or do you | have to do other gyrations to make it work? Do you have to | upgrade continually to avoid the services playing whack-a- | mole with your bridges? | | I ask because I'd like to set up Matrix bridges like that | locally, but if I have to create a Discord bot account or | fish out an API key then that's asking a bit much. | olah_1 wrote: | i think both Element matrix services and Beeper both offer | this as a service now | mdasen wrote: | Maybe I'll look into it more, but it feels messy and | complicated at first glance. Portal rooms, plumbed rooms, | bridgebot bridges, Bot-API bridges, puppeted bridges, double- | puppeted bridges, server-to-server briding, and sidecar | bridges. I haven't used it so some of this may be wrong and | I'm happy to accept corrections. | | It seems like a puppeted bridge requires me to send the | messages to the Matrix server who then has a login to my FB | Messenger to read/write messages there. I'm not going to run | my own Matrix server so that requires me to trust a Matrix | server with access to my Facebook. | | Yes, downloaded apps can be malware, but it's a lot more | easily discoverable. One can use tools like Wireshark to | confirm where data is going. If apps are open source, one can | see the source code and even compile one's self. Even if you | don't trust the maintainer who is compiling, you still have a | good idea that they're not sending all your messages to them | because someone is more likely to notice the binary doing | that (via tools like Wireshark). When software is just run on | a server that the public doesn't have access to, who knows | what is happening. Yes, running on your machine doesn't mean | everything is safe, but there's some level of inspection you | can do of what is going on. | | I don't want to sound too down on Matrix, but it feels a bit | off to me. It feels like people who want a decentralized | future...where everyone is centralized into a small number of | servers who can run a dozen or so Docker containers and such. | Maybe that's the way the world needs to be given where we're | at, but I just miss having a client that could login to | multiple chat services. | | If these puppeted bridges can exist, why can't my client just | puppet directly? Why send the message to the matrix server | for the matrix server to then call the Facebook API? I | remember the days of AIM breaking the OSCAR protocol and | libpurple/libgaim needing to catch up so I understand that | pushing out an update to client software might mean some | extra hiccups in the connectivity. Still, it feels like the | servers might not be able to update their software much | faster than I am able to. Maybe App Store approvals holding | up updates is the issue? Is the issue that app stores could | block a Matrix + bridges client since it's clearly trying to | access services that don't want third-party access, but a | Matrix client that's just talking to a Metrix server is fine | - and then the "infraction" is on a server that the App Store | doesn't get a say over? (I'm not saying that I think it | should be disallowed, but I could see companies disliking it) | | Is the issue that people want to write these bridges in | JavaScript, Python, and other languages which are all fine if | you're running a bunch of Docker containers on a server, but | might not work so well if you're trying to create a desktop | or mobile app? | | Why can Matrix bridge these things, but we can't have a | libpurple that works as well as these bridges? Or maybe I | just haven't used libpurple in a long time and it's actually | still good and I should re-try it. | | It feels like Matrix wants to be a decentralizing force, but | then the bridges force me to centralize my messaging through | one of their servers. Again, maybe that's the way it needs to | be for reasons, but it just doesn't feel like what I've been | looking for. | kevincox wrote: | You don't need to know most of those things to get started, | in general you can just follow the setup instructions for | the services you use. | | You do need your own homeserver, but for me I run a | homeserver just for the bridges, and have my main account | on a third-party homeserver. This way at least my native | matrix chats (which are far more important to me) don't | depend on my home server being online. | | I would subscribe to hosted bridges fairly quickly if they | were a reasonable price. Maybe $1/month per service? | Obviously there is risk here because you are trusting | someone with access to your account but to me it is | probably worth it. There is https://www.beeper.com/ but you | need to move your primary account to their service, which | is just too much disruption and lock-in for me. | | TL;DR I agree, self-hosting is a bit much. I'd love to be | able to pay for it though. | | I thought about hosting that service myself but I wouldn't | want to run a service that is both against the | dependencies' ToS and is playing cat-and-mouse with their | attempts to shake you off. Too much excitement for too | little reward. | danShumway wrote: | > Maybe that's the way the world needs to be given where | we're at, but I just miss having a client that could login | to multiple chat services. | | I'd be very curious to know if the work on P2P Matrix | servers is going to include some level of support for | client-side bridges? | | I know the P2P work and bridging aren't quite the same | thing, but it seems like the two are vaguely related: if | you've got a bridge running, I suspect that would have a | lot of the same concerns as running a Matrix server | locally. And I get that for some clients like iMessage, | your bridge has to be running on a Mac, but that isn't the | case for most other messaging platforms, is it? | iforgotpassword wrote: | I tried matrix bridged to IRC (libera) a while ago. It didn't | sync back to matrix properly when people on irc left the | channel, so you'd try to talk to someone on irc who wasn't | there anymore. One time, a person on irc couldn't see any | messages by any matrix users until they reconnected to the | Network. And IRC is an old, open, well understood protocol. I | just cannot imagine that a bridge to eg Whatsapp would result | in anything even remotely usable. | kevincox wrote: | To be fair your first problem sounds like an impedance | mismatch more than anything else. Users come and go from | IRC all the time because connections are transient by | nature. It would probably be annoying to a lot of people if | they left the room every time they disconnected. | | Matrix and WhatsApp are both durable with regards to users | so this issue probably isn't relevant. | | Personally I find the biggest problem with puppeting is the | impedance mismatches. For example if reactions aren't | bridged it can be easy to miss stuff. This depends on the | bridge used. | Apocryphon wrote: | There's still third party clients. I use Ferdi, which is the | open-source equivalent to Franz and Rambox. | mattgreenrocks wrote: | The ironic thing is the protocols are now almost all dirt | simple but I perceive the risk of being C&D'd for making | alternative clients to not be worth the risk. | Kye wrote: | AOL definitely took issue with gaim, which was Pidgin's old | name from when it was mainly an AIM client. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software)#Naming_dispu. | .. | Melatonic wrote: | Yeah the days of integrated chat messengers seem to be dead. I | loved Trillian way back when and all of the UI customization | options. | xenophonf wrote: | Does Adium not compile on newer versions of macOS? Development | appears to have slowed down, but it doesn't look completely | abandoned. I might try to feed it to Xcode on my hackintosh if | only to see what kinds of errors crop up. | | That said, I've switched back to terminal-based IRC clients, so | I haven't run either Pidgin or Adium in probably 10 years. It's | sad. Both were really good tools. | duskwuff wrote: | Honestly, it's mostly a matter of Adium having lost its | purpose. Most of the IM networks it originally interacted | with no longer exist or are no longer open to third-party | clients, and the ones that remain (mostly XMPP and IRC) | aren't necessarily a great fit for Adium. | pjerem wrote: | I've been surprised recently by the availability of plugins | for libpurple (the lib on which Adium is based) which | supports Telegram, Signal, Facebook ... | duskwuff wrote: | Modern IM networks aren't a great fit for libpurple | because they fundamentally work differently. | | "Old-school" IM networks like AIM were simple to work | with from a client perspective -- you connect to the | network, you send and receive messages, and that's it. | There was no real support for server-side message | history, multiple clients, mobile clients, or offline | messaging, so third-party clients often just implemented | their own local history instead. | | Newer IM networks like Telegram are usually designed from | a mobile-first perspective -- the Telegram client | protocol is designed around the concept that the server | has a definitive view of history across all chats, and | the client synchronizes portions of that history to local | storage to display it. It certainly isn't impossible to | adapt this to a design like libpurple/Adium/etc, but it's | an awkward fit and is likely to fail to support features | which don't fit into that model, like chat messages being | edited or deleted by the other party in the conversation. | vanshlanger wrote: | definitely used Adium when I had a white macbook | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | I'd love to see what Adium's interface actually looked like, | but apparently the website does not believe in screenshots. :( | MiddleEndian wrote: | One of the non-obvious parts of Adium's interface from the | screenshots was that it integrated with Mac OS's calendar | app, so I could have a contact "John Smith" and enter his AIM | name, his Yahoo name, etc and they'd all show up as "John | Smith" and be collapsed into one entry in your contact list. | | On top of that, Adium is/was also incredibly themable. You | could use independent Adium Xtra addons for both your contact | list and your chats. I had a theme so that all messages just | appeared sequentially like so: | | [Hello][Hello][What's Up?][Etc.] | | where mine were red and the person I was talking to was in | blue (or vice versa, it's been awhile). You could see so many | messages at once. | | Adium is the application I miss most from MacOS, although I | imagine I'd still miss it even if I were still using a Mac. | With the exception of the addition of multi-device continuous | chat history, we've really regressed in the category of | instant messaging since the days of multi-chat clients. | egypturnash wrote: | I'm using a Mac and I definitely miss Adium. | lproven wrote: | Er... does this help? | | https://adium.im/screenshots/ | | I still have it installed. It was very useful in the PowerPC | era. | | Pidgin still is useful: it talks to a whole bunch of services | that are still alive... IRC, Telegram, Skype, Google | Hangouts, Slack, Rocket.chat, XMPP, ICQ, etc. | | Sadly Adium can't use Pidgin or Libpurple plugins directly. | This severely reduces its usefulness today. | mdasen wrote: | The website isn't well maintained anymore since we've kinda | passed the days that people used multi-service clients. Here | are some screenshots: | | https://www.adium.im/screenshots/images/overview.jpg | | The area inside the chat window is HTML rendered via WebKit | and you can change the theme easily. The Contacts list is | also HTML in the middle so that's all theme-able too. | | https://images.six.betanews.com/screenshots/1110403338-1.jpg | | Here's a Contacts list that's more compact and a chat window | without the top toolbar. | | https://adium.im/screenshots/images/overvieworange.jpg | | Here's a more radical theming where they've gotten rid of the | window around the contact list so it's floating. | | If you go through the Adium Xtras, you can see all sorts of | chat (https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5& | sort=...), contact list (https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php | ?a=cats&cat_id=4&sort=do...), and other ways of styling | Adium. | Gualdrapo wrote: | > The area inside the chat window is HTML rendered via | WebKit and you can change the theme easily | | KDE's Kopete (and after that, the now defunct KDE | Telepathy) could that too. Maybe GNOME's Empathy client | could that too. I agree all of that was really cool. | | I sorely miss those all-in-one messengers completely | integrated to the desktop. | dmacvicar wrote: | In Kopete we even had Latex rendering plugins and auto- | away plugins using motion detection :-) | | (I started that project decades ago and still grateful to | it, as it was the start of my career in tech) | bergie wrote: | The messaging app on the Nokia N900 was also based on | libpurple. You had all of your Google Talk and Skype contacts | and chats, together with SMS in a single place. | wjt wrote: | It was based on Telepathy https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/. | None of the built-in backends for XMPP, SIP, Skype and | cellular calls used libpurple. (A libpurple-based backend | could be installed from the community app repo.) | lousken wrote: | After ICQ and QIP, Trillian was the way to go for me. | Unfortunately the inability to use facebook without being | constantly banned forced me to switch to Element. And while | Element and Matrix is cool, it still doesn't come close to | Trillian. Emotes are not customizable, theming is harder, and the | amount of things u can do with history is endless compared to | Element. Overall I feel like Element is more like Teams and | missing features for power users. The search functionality and | working with many attachments in element is very tedious, no way | to search in them, sort them, filter them... I hope they can | improve on that, I have over 500k messages and history feels | useless thanks to that. | shashurup wrote: | I definitely liked it, however, since whatsapp, telegram, slack | etc had joined the game with mostly proprietary protocols it | looks like it just has no chance to catch up and it is very sad - | I find the ability to choose a client quite important. | | P.S. I have even written a plugin for - quickpurple | __del__ wrote: | protocols like aim's oscar were proprietary. it's the legal and | business landscape that's changed. | ganzuul wrote: | I could never come to terms with the tattered and worn user | interface experience for an application that is so prominent on | the desktop. Perhaps the widget system is glamorous underneath, | but to accomplish its job of getting out of the way of | functionality... I can feel the RSI acting up from the time when | Pidgin was my only option. | | Thanks for what you did, no thanks for repeat business. | millzlane wrote: | I grew up using windows running the "classic" interface. It's | really no different from any other GTK based app. | vanshlanger wrote: | Damn I used to use pidgin like 15 years ago, can't believe | they're still around! | hammyhavoc wrote: | Why not Matrix with bridges? | zaik wrote: | Bridges require you to forfeit your credentials to your | homeserver and break E2EE. | hammyhavoc wrote: | But surely if it was worth protecting then you would be | having that conversation on Matrix in the first place rather | than Facebook Messenger? | zaik wrote: | I mostly use XMPP for secure communication. Sadly, Matrix | does not built upon the XMPP standard and reinvents another | incompatible E2EE chat protocol. | BaseballPhysics wrote: | I had really mixed experiences with the various Matrix bridges | the last time I tried this. I might have to take another crack | at it, though, to see if it's gotten any better. | | Though, honestly, now that most people I know are on Signal, | the only other messenger platform I care about is Slack, and | given that's just for work, I'm not sure I care anymore... | anta40 wrote: | I'm a heavy Pidgin user during undergraduate days (2006-2010), | when Yahoo Messenger was still really popular. | | Thanks to Pidgin Portable, simply copied the zipped folder to the | USB flashdisk, visit any computer lab then I can YM'ed my | friends. Good old days :) | valbaca wrote: | oh pidgin. Throughout my life (as a millennial) chat went this | way: | | 1. IRC | | 2. IRC, Yahoo messenger, Aol Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger | (mostly based on your ISP in the early days) | | 3. All + Skype (video!! wow!) + Google messenger. *This was when | pidgin was invaluable* (there was also some Duck app for macOS?) | | 4. Skype started charging and since everyone was on Facebook, | everyone moved to Facebook messenger. Text messages also became | free, so for instant comms you just texted people. | | 5. Slowly FB Messenger took precedence over even text messages as | data plans became better | | 6. A decade passes... | | 7. The exodus off of Facebook begins and Discord takes over as a | way to talk to your group of friends. | jitix wrote: | As an Indian millennial, my journey was a bit different: | | 1. Yahoo messenger (2001/2 - First internet experience) | | 2. Yahoo messenger + Text (2003/4) | | 3. Text + Skype (2006/7) | | 4. Whatsapp + FB Messenger + Skype (2010) | | 5. Whatsapp/iMessage + Instagram (2016/17) | sidpatil wrote: | > (there was also some Duck app for macOS?) | | I believe you're referring to Adium [1]. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adium | pacbard wrote: | > there was also some Duck app for macOS? | | You are thinking of Adium (https://adium.im). I believe it was | a port of pidgin/libpurple to cocoa/aqua (or whatever the macOS | gui framework was back then). | mattwad wrote: | What no ICQ? I got off the train before FB Messenger, | personally. I don't think it was 'required' to have an app | anymore once texting became free. And now everyone's on | iMessage, except for Android users like me. | Melatonic wrote: | Don't forget Trillian! | sumtechguy wrote: | I still use it. But all it is good for anymore is a google | chat/hangouts desktop app. It was nice gluing all of them | together like pidgin. | johnisgood wrote: | Woah! My Trillian-lover friend also used KVirc quite a lot. | Actually, not sure it was called KVirc, but something like | that. | klvino wrote: | Would probably include ICQ in the list for #2 | dijit wrote: | Similar. | | 1. IRC | | 2. ICQ | | 3. MSN | | 4. IRC (again) | | 5. Skype and Facebook | | 6. WhatsApp | | 7. Facebook again | | 8. Still Facebook (very sticky) | | 9. IRC + Slack (some communities) + Discord (some communities) | + Facebook/Whatsapp + Signal + Telegram + Matrix + Zulip | | Yeah, I think we need a new libpurple. | snvzz wrote: | Before: IRC + XMPP. | | Today: IRC + Matrix. | syntheticnature wrote: | Part of the lack of 'new libpurple' is that companies have | grown much more adept at/focused on removing third party | clients. Discord in particular, IIRC, will even ban users for | using third party clients. | chipx86 wrote: | This was a problem even back when Gaim (now Pidgin) was at | peak popularity. | | I used to be a dev on the team, and we had our accounts | banned all the time. Some of the IM services didn't mind us | being there (MSN seemed more than fine with it, and we | reportedly had fans within the team there, though future | protocol versions made it harder for us to figure out). | | Yahoo wanted us off and did everything they could to keep | us from connecting. Changing auth schemes to increasingly- | elaborate obfuscated methods, at one point throwing pages | of what looked like equations at us. | | AIM would have been fine with us if we had used TOC (their | open source protocol), but OSCAR is where all the features | were at. They didn't outright ban clients, but my | understanding is that their lawyers were involved at one | point (though I think mainly due to the name "GAIM"). | | But you're right, they are removing third-party clients | more. And fewer protocols are unencrypted plain text, which | makes it harder as well. Still, work continues. | tjader wrote: | I've been using Matrix + bridges to fill that gap. I use IRC, | Telegram, Google Chat, Discord and WhatsApp all via bridges, | so I only have to interact with a single interface and all my | chats are in the same place. | | Before that I used first Trillian, then Pidgin. Then seeking | persistence across clients I started using bitlbee to access | everything through IRC, but that really sucked for media- | heavy things like Telegram. My current setup of my own Matrix | homeserver + bridges has been working great and feels way | more liberating than using 6 different apps. | kurisufag wrote: | this, but I bridged them all to IRC by custom means, which | is the easiest to implement and allows people on all | platforms to talk in the same channel-equivalent. the media | issue is solved by using a more modern client that can | generate embeds (e.g. glowing-bear for weechat-relay). | tjader wrote: | Do you manage to get pictures, audio messages, videos and | reactions to work well in both directions with that | setup? | | Also, I use this for personal messages as well as group | chats. The people I interact with don't even know I am | not using the native client. | spennant wrote: | I started with Talk - | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_(software) But I guess | that's because I'm Gen-X | mxuribe wrote: | Thank you! I remember that I had started on a chat system | right before IRC, but could not for the life of me remember | its name; though i knew that it was a simple name. Talk was | the first thing that i started on, but once i learned that | IRC allowed me to connect with folks around the world (at | the time, Talk was limited to the single unix server that | users were connected to, though that constraint was | expanded beyond that later on if i recall correctly). Man, | i remember those early days; what fun to marvel at chatting | with others either across the university campus or - later | on - across the world! | Agamus wrote: | My path, which began in 1997: | | 1. IRC | k__ wrote: | Haha, nice. | | My journey was: | | 1. ICQ, because my gamer friends used it. | | 2. Added IRC, while it felt already outdated, somehow a bunch | of my Japan-nerd friends used it. | | 3. Added AIM, YIM, MSN, because girls and my parents used them. | | 4. Switched to Trillian, because it wasn't managable otherwise. | | 5. Everyone moved to Facebook Messenger. | | 6. Everyone moved to WhatsApp | | 7. Now and then some friends switch to Signal, Telegram, or | another "secure," alternative to WhatsApp. | | 8. Started working remote and everything is Slack and Zoom. | | 9. Dabbled in Web3/crypto and everything is Discord | HeckFeck wrote: | Stage 2 evokes warm memories. The clients were featureful | enough but very far from being resource hogs. The UIs were | workable and hid plenty of options in their menus. | | The webcam features on MSN messenger landed at the same time as | broadband internet became widespread in my country, when I was | at school, so everyone was in on the novelty. | | Some of it is certainly the cynicism of age and work life, but | I'm certain something has been lost since then. The UI, the | nudges, the winks, the games, the chaotic friend lists were all | magic in a way that FB, WA, Slack, Teams, Discord, et al | aren't. | egman_ekki wrote: | 1. Odigo & web based chats | | 2. ICQ | | 3. Trillian & QIP, mostly to connect to ICQ | | 4. Facebook chat | | 5. Google Hangouts, Allo, gmail chat | | 6. Back to Facebook Messenger because all my contacts use it, | Slack for work | madrox wrote: | I'm the proud owner of a six digit ICQ number. What a time that | was. | | It's funny. Having a similar trajectory of chat clients, I'd | say my migration in my teens was dictated by "which service | were the girls I wanted to talk to using?" In my 20s it was | "what preserved my session as I ran around town and logged into | various dumb terminals" until finally "what worked best on | mobile." | | Now that I'm married in my 40s, it's "which service are the | guys I want to talk to using?" | 8ytecoder wrote: | GTalk - you could install it without admin and it was blazing | fast. | qiskit wrote: | No icq? There was a time when the first thing you installed on | your computer was instant messaging applications. It's how you | kept in touch with friends online. Crazy how quickly it fell | off. | ValtteriL wrote: | Pidgin has been a trusty XMPP client. Staff at one of my previous | employers used it for IRC. | | Interestingly, some actors are willing to buy exploits against | Pidgin users for sums higher than what the authors have made out | of it.[0] | | [0] https://therecord.media/zerodium-acquiring-zero-days-in- | pidg... | millzlane wrote: | Great app. But development was hostile to new users willing to | help report bugs. It was then I learned of the "if you can't fix | it, then don't complain" crowd of OSS. | tomfast wrote: | Still universal! | UltraViolence wrote: | greatquux wrote: | I still use Pidgin for XMPP and the increasingly-unreliable- | Facebook-Messenger plugin, along with a Gnome extension that | allows me to reply directly to chat popups from the notification | no matter what virtual desktop I'm on. I really can't get that | combination anywhere else in fact and I hope it never stops | working. :) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-25 23:00 UTC)