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I remember using Pidgin in ~2009. A dozen chat networks, all on one app. Desktop software built with a native GUI toolkit. And, on top of all that: you could ke

I remember using Pidgin in ~2009. A dozen chat networks, all on one app. Desktop software built with a native GUI toolkit. And, on top of all that: you could keep your chat logs forever. The world of yesterday.

twolegs 8mo ago
And me using Adium on Mac ~2006. Of course rose-tinted glasses and everything, but it was a great experience.
- MiddleEndian 8mo ago
  It's not rose-tinted glasses IMO. Aside from cross-device continuous chats (which weren't really relevant at the time) and maybe being harder to send pics (can't recall), Adium was a far better messaging experience than anything modern. * You could theme it however you wanted to an obscene amount. I had it display all messages right after each other in a small font without any linebreaks and I've never been able to have anything like that since then. * The dock icon showed the names of the last few people who sent you unread messages * It integrated with the OS X phone book app so you could it would display a single "John Smith" regardless of how many chat apps (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.) you had them on * It was actually smooth and not clunky (unlike Pidgin at the time and maybe half of apps today).
  - anthk 8mo ago
    I used Kopete with inline videos and a newspaper-like theme. It was amazing and beautiful. That under 256MB of RAM. Nowadays you would need 2GB to do the same.
    - MiddleEndian 8mo ago
      That sounds about right. I've never used Kopete myself but the KDE team always puts out good work for OSS UIs
      - anthk 8mo ago
        And bear in mind KDE3 was considered the bloated DE, as XFCE (even the GTK2 build) could snappily run with 64 MB of RAM and maybe less with a light GTK engine (yes, choosing the GTK2 engine mattered a lot back in the day). And, yes, choosing Pidgin and a light window manager such as Fluxbox/Openbox could make run machine run well with 64MB at really fast speeds.
- jpalepu 8mo ago
  Great nostalgic reminder! Multi-protocol clients like Adium and Pidgin offered unified messaging and features like persistent logs and customizable interfaces that modern apps often lack.
  - 3eb7988a1663 8mo ago
    Probably required <50MB of RAM as well.
- techpression 8mo ago
  Back when apps dared to have fun icons. I still smile when I open Cyberduck because of the hilarious icon (which is extremely well designed).
- anthk 8mo ago
  Same code in the background. Kopete for KDE could use Adium chat themes and emoticons.
SoftTalker 8mo ago
> you could keep your chat logs forever Or delete them!
someotherperson 8mo ago
You can still use Beeper[0] and similar. The key issue with this type of application is that some networks have put more resources to detecting them and gotten more hostile to users of it - mostly those who tie ad revenue directly to messaging (although officially it's to avoid spam + detect compromised accounts). [0] https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/
- varun_ch 8mo ago
  I was surprised to see that Beeper actually has support for ‘local bridges’ that connect to services on-device (which reduces the risk of bans and removes Beeper as the middleman). I was unsurprised to see that (at least with the local Instagram bridge), Beeper is extremely inconsistent with push notifications and sometimes has messages missing in the chat.
dawnerd 8mo ago
Trillian too. Messaging back then was so much better.
shantara 8mo ago
I used Miranda. Beautiful app with lots of plugins, and lot of settings and themes to customize it for yourself.
hacker_homie 8mo ago
I had that experience on my phone (Nokia n900) all of them went through the messages app. I miss it.
luke5441 8mo ago
Theoretically there is regulation now that should allow an app like this again here in the EU. Currently it is in the "malicious compliance" phase.
gardnr 8mo ago
There was a plugin called "Off The Record" (OTR) which would do a pk exhange and then send cipher text over the channel. It was rad. You could have e2ee over Facebook Messenger. When you opened the chat in the Facebook web ui, all you could see was the cipher-text. Then Facebook started blocking 3rd party clients and Pidgin et-al slowly faded away. https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/
- alex1138 8mo ago
  Yeah but Facebook's 6 digit pin that they FORCED everyone on and severely disrupted messages and message history is totally a better system Zuck deserves to be in prison along with other black hat hackers, this is just one of so many other things he's guilty of
  - LollipopYakuza 8mo ago
    I don't understand your point. Do you mean he should go to prison for doing whatever he wants with his own product?
    - alex1138 8mo ago
      Mark Zuckerberg hacked Crimson reporters (a Harvard newspaper) who were investigating him for Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg's company took people's API-facing emails that were in their profiles and replaced them with a facebook.com address. Mark Zuckerberg's company deleted years of his own correspondence. This in addition to things like Onavo Yeah, I'm suggesting he go to prison for "doing whatever he wants"
      - CursedSilicon 8mo ago
        Do you have citations for these claims? To be clear. They're a weird goal post move from "FORCED a 6 digit pin"
- zetalyrae 8mo ago
  I remember! I also used Pidgin OTR over the Facebook XMPP gateway. At some point Facebook started recognizing it, but not banning it: you could go to the web interface and you'd see "encrypted message" instead of noise.
shimman 8mo ago
Pidgin is still being maintained/developed, one of the devs actively streams on twitch too IIRC.
- ale42 8mo ago
  Sure, but unfortunately most people are now using iMessage, Whatsapp, Signal, Facebook messenger, and so on, and Pidgin can't connect to any of them AFAIK.
  - rw_grim 8mo ago
    well now you know ;) https://pidgin.im/plugins/ https://pidgin.im/plugins/
    - ale42 8mo ago
      Interesting, there are apparently working plugins for both Signal and Whatsapp! Both appear to work as secondary devices. What would really be great is to have the possibility of using Pidgin as primary device...
Gualdrapo 8mo ago
I remember I had a plugin that let you change your profile picture each <x> time. And I seem to recall with ubuntu's notify-osd you could reply to your incoming messages from within the notification itself. I loved using Pidgin. "Modern" mainstream IM is completely misserable. I hate having to use one-app-per-each-protocol for the sake of "security" and "features".
RadiozRadioz 8mo ago
It's still there! Gary and the team are hard at work on Pidgin 3
anthk 8mo ago
From the same people, get Bitlbee with libpurple. IRC logging with your favourite client against everything supported by Bitlbee AND the Pidgin library. You can connect from any OS with an IRC client. It's astounding and liberating.
footy 8mo ago
I use Beeper now, but Pidgin was really top tier software. It was my favourite piece of software for a long time.
blell 8mo ago
GTK+ is only a native GUI toolkit in GNOME.
xnx 8mo ago
It's a miracle that we still have universally compatible email.
rw_grim 8mo ago
We never went anywhere and have support for modern protocols... See https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/news https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/news and https://pidgin.im/plugins/ https://pidgin.im/plugins/
montag 8mo ago
Shout out to Digsby as well. Similar app from around the same time period.

twolegs 8mo ago

And me using Adium on Mac ~2006. Of course rose-tinted glasses and everything, but it was a great experience.

MiddleEndian 8mo ago
It's not rose-tinted glasses IMO. Aside from cross-device continuous chats (which weren't really relevant at the time) and maybe being harder to send pics (can't recall), Adium was a far better messaging experience than anything modern. * You could theme it however you wanted to an obscene amount. I had it display all messages right after each other in a small font without any linebreaks and I've never been able to have anything like that since then. * The dock icon showed the names of the last few people who sent you unread messages * It integrated with the OS X phone book app so you could it would display a single "John Smith" regardless of how many chat apps (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.) you had them on * It was actually smooth and not clunky (unlike Pidgin at the time and maybe half of apps today).
- anthk 8mo ago
  I used Kopete with inline videos and a newspaper-like theme. It was amazing and beautiful. That under 256MB of RAM. Nowadays you would need 2GB to do the same.
  - MiddleEndian 8mo ago
    That sounds about right. I've never used Kopete myself but the KDE team always puts out good work for OSS UIs
    - anthk 8mo ago
      And bear in mind KDE3 was considered the bloated DE, as XFCE (even the GTK2 build) could snappily run with 64 MB of RAM and maybe less with a light GTK engine (yes, choosing the GTK2 engine mattered a lot back in the day). And, yes, choosing Pidgin and a light window manager such as Fluxbox/Openbox could make run machine run well with 64MB at really fast speeds.
jpalepu 8mo ago
Great nostalgic reminder! Multi-protocol clients like Adium and Pidgin offered unified messaging and features like persistent logs and customizable interfaces that modern apps often lack.
- 3eb7988a1663 8mo ago
  Probably required <50MB of RAM as well.
techpression 8mo ago
Back when apps dared to have fun icons. I still smile when I open Cyberduck because of the hilarious icon (which is extremely well designed).
anthk 8mo ago
Same code in the background. Kopete for KDE could use Adium chat themes and emoticons.

SoftTalker 8mo ago

> you could keep your chat logs forever Or delete them!

someotherperson 8mo ago

You can still use Beeper[0] and similar. The key issue with this type of application is that some networks have put more resources to detecting them and gotten more hostile to users of it - mostly those who tie ad revenue directly to messaging (although officially it's to avoid spam + detect compromised accounts). [0] https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/

varun_ch 8mo ago
I was surprised to see that Beeper actually has support for ‘local bridges’ that connect to services on-device (which reduces the risk of bans and removes Beeper as the middleman). I was unsurprised to see that (at least with the local Instagram bridge), Beeper is extremely inconsistent with push notifications and sometimes has messages missing in the chat.

dawnerd 8mo ago

Trillian too. Messaging back then was so much better.

shantara 8mo ago

I used Miranda. Beautiful app with lots of plugins, and lot of settings and themes to customize it for yourself.

hacker_homie 8mo ago

I had that experience on my phone (Nokia n900) all of them went through the messages app. I miss it.

luke5441 8mo ago

Theoretically there is regulation now that should allow an app like this again here in the EU. Currently it is in the "malicious compliance" phase.

gardnr 8mo ago

There was a plugin called "Off The Record" (OTR) which would do a pk exhange and then send cipher text over the channel. It was rad. You could have e2ee over Facebook Messenger. When you opened the chat in the Facebook web ui, all you could see was the cipher-text. Then Facebook started blocking 3rd party clients and Pidgin et-al slowly faded away. https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/

alex1138 8mo ago
Yeah but Facebook's 6 digit pin that they FORCED everyone on and severely disrupted messages and message history is totally a better system Zuck deserves to be in prison along with other black hat hackers, this is just one of so many other things he's guilty of
- LollipopYakuza 8mo ago
  I don't understand your point. Do you mean he should go to prison for doing whatever he wants with his own product?
  - alex1138 8mo ago
    Mark Zuckerberg hacked Crimson reporters (a Harvard newspaper) who were investigating him for Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg's company took people's API-facing emails that were in their profiles and replaced them with a facebook.com address. Mark Zuckerberg's company deleted years of his own correspondence. This in addition to things like Onavo Yeah, I'm suggesting he go to prison for "doing whatever he wants"
    - CursedSilicon 8mo ago
      Do you have citations for these claims? To be clear. They're a weird goal post move from "FORCED a 6 digit pin"
zetalyrae 8mo ago
I remember! I also used Pidgin OTR over the Facebook XMPP gateway. At some point Facebook started recognizing it, but not banning it: you could go to the web interface and you'd see "encrypted message" instead of noise.

shimman 8mo ago

Pidgin is still being maintained/developed, one of the devs actively streams on twitch too IIRC.

ale42 8mo ago
Sure, but unfortunately most people are now using iMessage, Whatsapp, Signal, Facebook messenger, and so on, and Pidgin can't connect to any of them AFAIK.
- rw_grim 8mo ago
  well now you know ;) https://pidgin.im/plugins/ https://pidgin.im/plugins/
  - ale42 8mo ago
    Interesting, there are apparently working plugins for both Signal and Whatsapp! Both appear to work as secondary devices. What would really be great is to have the possibility of using Pidgin as primary device...

Gualdrapo 8mo ago

I remember I had a plugin that let you change your profile picture each <x> time. And I seem to recall with ubuntu's notify-osd you could reply to your incoming messages from within the notification itself. I loved using Pidgin. "Modern" mainstream IM is completely misserable. I hate having to use one-app-per-each-protocol for the sake of "security" and "features".

RadiozRadioz 8mo ago

It's still there! Gary and the team are hard at work on Pidgin 3

anthk 8mo ago

From the same people, get Bitlbee with libpurple. IRC logging with your favourite client against everything supported by Bitlbee AND the Pidgin library. You can connect from any OS with an IRC client. It's astounding and liberating.

footy 8mo ago

I use Beeper now, but Pidgin was really top tier software. It was my favourite piece of software for a long time.

blell 8mo ago

GTK+ is only a native GUI toolkit in GNOME.

xnx 8mo ago

It's a miracle that we still have universally compatible email.

rw_grim 8mo ago

We never went anywhere and have support for modern protocols... See https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/news https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/news and https://pidgin.im/plugins/ https://pidgin.im/plugins/

montag 8mo ago

Shout out to Digsby as well. Similar app from around the same time period.