It's that time again-- how could i have forgotten! Since Karmic, the new release of Ubuntu, is in development, it is once again time to talk about Empathy replacing Pidgin. This discussion will keep coming up until it finally happens. [Forum link]
Empathy is great for most users, especially new ones, and it can replace poth Pidgin and Ekiga. It is now the default IM application in GNOME and Fedora plans to make the switch as well. It only lacks a few basic features outlined by Nicolò Chieffo on the mailing list:
- Rich text messages
- Msn chat with invisible users
- Msn send and receive offline messages
- Msn file transfers
These are certainly not showstoppers and including it in Karmic would pretty much guarantee that they would be resolved within the release cycle.
Empathy is simple and integrates well, and we want to make Ubuntu friendly for new users. Old users who prefer the clutter and feature madness of Pidgin will simply install it from Add/Remove (or not even have to if they run an upgrade). If Ubuntu switched to Empathy, it's development is going to get a big boost so the feature gap will close and eventaully reverse. Some people disagree with this reasoning but i also weigh the pragmatic benefits and disadvantages. In this case, perhaps this message posted by Rick Spencer says it best:
I think switching to empathy is a fairly substantial change, and people
in good faith will and should question that change.
However, given Danny's points, the fact that pidgin will stay available
and supported, the responsiveness of the empathy developers, indeed all
the factors discussed at UDS, I see no reason to back off from the
decision made there.
Are people really defending Pidgin for the future of Ubuntu or just as their pet IM client?
From what I have seen, that list doesn't nearly cover the features that Empathy is lacking currently. For instance, user's who currently use Pidgin as an IRC client would find Empathy an inadequate replacement, since it's IRC support is broken (or at least it was last month).
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I feel that moving to Empathy is a great move if it means that the Ubuntu desktop will be closer to having a client that supports AIM and GTalk voice and video chatting.
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DeleteI'm all for Empathy - I think it's a great step forward as it has much more capability and integration potential than Pidgin.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing holding me back from using it right now is the lack of OTR support. With wiretapping so prevalent and seemingly acceptable, as well as corporate data mining and regular old hackers tapping conversations, OTR is a basic requirement. I hope Empathy gets support for this feature soon.
Neither Pidgin nor Empathy make good IRC clients, but it is true that Empathy's support is broken at the moment (should be fixed very soon). IRC really deserves to be used in an IRC client like x-chat, and again, most new users don't use IRC. IRC is for geeks, and us geeks aren't the ones default apps should be catering to-- we should be appealing to new users.
ReplyDeleteIf Empathy has no "showstoppers" then we should make the switch and move forward. There's way more potential with Empathy than Pidgin for the future. Here's looking forward! +1 for Empathy!
ReplyDeleteNot show stoppers? I used to talk most of the time with a girl over MSN that was invisible half of the time at least.
ReplyDeleteI think emphaty is a great project and I really hope there is enough time to take care of the show stoppers if it is to replace pidgin and ekiga.
Yeah, those are showstoppers. All of them are important.
ReplyDeletePersonally I use IRC a lot, but can see that newbies wouldn't need it, so fair enough.
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ReplyDeleteI wonder why you think that inclusion would guarantee fixes when noone is willing to work on MSN support?
ReplyDeleteI hate the fact that it's necessary, but it is. All friends on my free time and all coworkers on my work time use it and use it for offline messages and file transfers and more. You can only be "that guy" for so long before you are actually obstructive and not constructive.
Now, I want Empathy as default. It has the best idea of them all, or so I think. But when it is ready. When it has real file transfers, the fast direct ones. When it works behind firewalls. When it can send offline messages and receive them. When you can set a status and at least view custom images, silly as that may be. And more. And all this for MSN. Sadly.
Oh, and even though I know how to switch client easily, these are most definitely showstoppers in that new users will get a broken desktop. This is the second (first?) importance after te browser to a LOT of people. You can't just try to handwave that fact away.
ReplyDeleteI fail to see how not being able to send a file is not a showstopper :). I do that like almost daily and resorting through other means will really suck.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I hope they get fixed...
Empathy has been the top active project in Gnome for the last few weeks, with about 100 commits a week on average. The pace of development is astounding. Once the move to Empathy is the default, Ubuntu can start depending on it for other applications' communication needs (using Tubes). Gnome Games are getting Tubes support. Vino just got Tubes support, meaning that you can share your desktop with your contacts in Empathy.
ReplyDeleteI understand why 8.04 didn't ship with Empathy, but the change needs to happen. Empathy is 95% there. The needed changes can be made before Karmic if Ubuntu (and Canonical) commits to it. If 9.10 ships with Empathy, all the major bugs will be worked out by 10.04. Who wants to add yet ANOTHER new technology to another LTS.
I'll add my voice to the list of "wow, these _are_ showstoppers".
ReplyDeleteLike it or not (I certainly don't), MSN has huge market share in some countries (like France, where it's clearly the dominant IM with possibly 90% of all IM traffic).
The anonymous guy three posts above summed it all very cleanly and I fully agree with him:
1. Replacing Pidgin with Empathy does not guarantee that the necessary work on MSN will get done.
2. I also "want Empathy as default. It has the best idea of them all, or so I think. But __when it is ready__"
Please do not base such decisions on a partial (US-centric?) view of IM usage. Pidgin has some gripes and things to get used to, but it _currently_ has something more than Empathy: it works with MSN.
Hmmm, Daengbo's point about including Empathy in 9.10 with the objective of being clean for 10.04LTS makes a lot of sense. I'm almost sold :P
ReplyDeleteInteresting discussion mates, thanks.
Does the opinion that the Pidgin developers have historically been arrogant, uncaring dicks fit into the equation at all (has this changed in the last 4 years?)
ReplyDeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteI like Pidgin, but I don't yet try Empathy...
But really, what new users want ? What they need when they come from Windows Live / MSN ? ... Phone and Webcam !!!
aMSN support Webcam (not perfect)... Pidgin support nothing !
Does Ampathy will have Voice and Webcam support ?
With MSN Windows client ?
With Google Talk ?
...
My wife only use Ubuntu on an Acer Aspire One (Great !)... Her only problem is to have the WEBCAM...
;-)
One thing that seems to be missing, and is important to me is that Pidgin is cross-platform. I have to use Windows at work, and having one single app that I can use at work or at home is, well, really nice. I don't have to configure things twice, etc...
ReplyDeleteWhat about the fact that Empathy has no strong crypto support? That just guarantees that once MSN is working, Microsoft will be able to log our conversations.
ReplyDeleteWhat's next, moving to an email client with no GPG support because "new users" don't need that and should have to jump through more and more hoops to get basic security?
Don't pretend "new users" don't use crypto, either: right now, setting up pidgin-OTR requires ONE CLICK in the Plugins menu.
This is insane. Here in Italy (EU in general, I think) everyone who isn't on Skype is on MSN or is on both and nothing else. And everyone who's on MSN does exactly what Empathy can't do now:
ReplyDelete* Rich text messages
* Custom emoticons
* Protocol emoticons
* Msn chat with invisible users
* Msn send and receive offline messages
* Msn see windows live messenger buddy icons (only new versions of 2009)
* Msn file transfers
Nobody here cares about IRC anymore (there are plenty of clients including Firefox extensions anyway) or support for a thousand protocols. We need a solid MSN client, and that's it. This is just another step backwards, and it's not like Pidgin was flawless: file transfers still are atrocious for example, but at least work for small files. Webcam and voice chat probably also don't work, and they should for it to be a _real_ MSN replacement.
Empathy's AIM support is also missing a critical feature: knowing whether a user is mobile or not. Pidgin shows a cell phone icon if the user is mobile, which lets me know if I should message them or not. With Empathy, there is no way to know until I send them a message. And a lot of the people I know who are mobile AIM users get pissed off if the message just says hi... whats up... etc as that eats up their messages. Empathy absolutely must have an icon indicating a user is mobile for AIM before I can use it, thats a showstopper.
ReplyDeleteIRC should be deprecated already. It needs to fuck off and be replaced with Jabber/XMPP as soon as possible.
ReplyDeleteIt's like twitter vs facebook to say so, the second one making more sense, that's why even twitter is consider selling asap.
Heck, www.tinychat.com ... it has audio/video and such... (which have not been working for me on ubuntu for some reason... lol).
What about other major differences like-
ReplyDeleteEmpathy doesn't have plugins
Empathy doesn't look anywhere near as polished
Empathy isn't cross platform (less people are familiar with it)
Empathy doesn't have features like Buddy Pounce
For me Empathy's looks are a real problem, and the lack of rich text is definitely a showstopper.
File transfers are a show stopper when a lot of people send you a lot of files all day long and you simply can't keep on telling them it will not work, it's simply not practical. Show. Stopper.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous from Italy, this is the EXACT same situation as here in Sweden (and our neighbours in Norway). Adn your analysis is 100% correct when it comes to out use. The only real client is actually, and sadly AMSN which is a really really really sucky app but the only one that works for proper use with other human beings...
ReplyDeleteEmpathy is missing the ability for a user to choose to NOT have their password saved. There's no way to add an account without Empathy saving your password. Huge security hole.
ReplyDeleteAS long as it doesn't have OTR support... no.
ReplyDeleteIn these days almost every country has dataretention or other surveillance wiretapping Or companys wiretapping etc.
Pidgin has crossplatform support, and so we uses Pidgin on both win and ubuntu desktops at work to make the user feel more at home. Can't se this with empathy..
ReplyDeleteI have used both, and Empathy is currently not ready, IMHO.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Empathy has more potential, but it is certainly NOT ready to replace Pidgin. Like some people from european countries have pointed out, MSN is still the predominant IM client in many places. Here in Brazil, for example, it's accountable for at least 95% of the IM traffic, not counting softphones like Skype. I already feel uncomfortable using Pidgin due to the crippled MSN support, and Empathy is even worse. If it does come default with KArmic, the very first thing I will do is uninstall it and install Pidgin and aMSN.
ReplyDeleteReally shocking and sad to hear that Pidgin will be replaced in Karmic. But till then, here's a post about Pidgin's otr plugin, which makes the conversation absolutely private:
ReplyDeletehttp://opensourcethefuture.blog.co.in/2009/08/28/private-encrypted-instant-messaging-in-pidgin/
empathy is very disappointing
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of other basic usability features that are shockingly lacking in Empathy - honestly, the user interface is "half baked" at best, it's not ready for production use as a basic chat client.
ReplyDeleteFor example - it's not currently possible to order the list of groups in Empathy. I have 450+ chat contacts and use Pidgin's robust grouping features to make order out of the chaos - in Empathy I have one long un-orderable list with groups in an arbitrary, unmodifiable sequence.
That alone should prevent Empathy from being considered for default inclusion in Karmic. Forget the whiz-bang featureset comparisons - it's main problems are usability.
I´m testing empathy right now on Karmic, so not much to say about the OP. But to all those who pointed, rightly, of the lacking support for MSN-specific usabilities, i want to point out to "emesene", a python based client for msn alone which does pretty much everything we might want, except video.
ReplyDeleteMy friends/contacts and I are emoticon-holic so... empathy is really dissapointing for me. :(
ReplyDeleteFor all the other features is good, but emotes are the big - for me
You know, this is (mostly) a great discussion thread...so I want to throw in my 2c. Pidgin is a great application but a key feature for me is voice and video chat with Gtalk useres. In that regard, Empathy's support is a real, real treat. Legacy (AIM, Yahoo) and open (Google, others) work very well. I mean, I use Skype constantly for everything from troubleshooting to file transfers to video chatting - and I have to install the special Skype client to do it. No chance in hell that Skype's going to open up their standards anytime soon. Users who absolutely need MSN support can find it in other programs, like kopete, or run it virtualized. I have to do this for Netflix. Anyway, you can install Pidgin if you want. And you can tell are your friends who are trying it the first time to install pidgin too. Then they'll have an idea for how super-easy it is to use and maintain their ubuntu install!
ReplyDeleteAnd you know what? It's December and Empathy is STILL not ready, even if it's already made default.
ReplyDeleteMerging contacts should be a basic functionality of a multi-protocol client - I have multiple friends with multiple accounts, and they should be grouped as a single contact.
It's just one of the many showstoppers Empathy needs to address before I even consider removing Pidgin.
Other showstoppers for Pidgin migration:
1. No Pidgin chat log import
2. Still no file transfer
3. General dumbing down of customisations - no logging prefs, no idle prefs, etc.
Serious problems, not necessarily showstoppers:
1. Still no custom emoticons
2. General unusability, e.g. In protocol setup, advanced section closed once protocol is changed
Empathy does not use the proxy settings of gnome. You cannot set proxy manually either. This breaks it for me, since at work I have to connect through a proxy.
ReplyDeletei'm all for new stuff but i've removed empathy because it's just not finished period;
ReplyDelete- empathy forgets my status (so after suspend i'm always "Available"...)
- when chatting with someone in a window there does not appear a tab when someone else talks to me but it just stays in the panel-icon (so i have to go there or to the contacts window click to chat to that person as well) there is no way to turn this on in prefs
these things are so dumb/untested that i will wait for next year ;)
have fun
FOOL RUSH IN . And that really describe empathy replacing pidgin.
ReplyDeleteIt is not whatever reason highlighted in the article. It is simply a bad decision. Saying that user can install pidgin after installation does not really justify putting empathy in karmic.
There is no merit of doing so. Instead what should be done is give time and motivation for the empathy project. Perhaps it can be in later release of ubuntu.
Let see now that empathy is in Karmic do the project/developer/maintainer even have the motivation to follow through with feature and improvement?
Anyway.. still that is not the point. A bad decision is a bad decision.
two years on, and empathy still sucks and I still have to remove it in favour of Pidgin on every new install...
ReplyDeleteempathy is very disappointing, nice one i really like it..
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ReplyDeleteHowever, given Danny's points, the fact that pidgin will stay available
ReplyDeleteand supported, the responsiveness of the empathy developers, indeed all
the factors discussed at UDS, I see no reason to back off from the
decision made there.
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it's development is going to get a big boost so the feature gap will close and eventaully reverse. Some people disagree with this reasoning but i also weigh the pragmatic benefits and disadvantages.
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