Empathy: the New Pidgin?
There’s some reason to believe that Empathy is the next big thing in instant-messaging on the Ubuntu desktop. There have been passionate calls for its adoption in Ubuntu 9.04 as a replacement for Pidgin, and the Gnome people seem to be pushing it (not surprisingly, since it’s developed under their auspices) for future releases–note the big green dot next to Mary Poppins’ name in the conceptualization images of the new Gnome desktop. Give all this hype, I decided to try it for myself.
I should point out that, a short-lived relationship with Kopete notwithstanding, I’ve been a Pidgin devotee since coming to Linux. I used it back when it was still called Gaim, before AOL sued the project for the crime of adopting a name that rhymes with ‘AIM’. In that time, it’s been a reliable, intuitive and extensible instant-messaging client.
Pidgin vs. Empathy
I installed Empathy version 2.24.1 (the same as my Gnome desktop) from the Ubuntu 8.10 repositories. The current stable release is 2.25, but according the project roadmap, the only features my version lacks are file transfers and the ability to invite people to chat.
My first impression of Empathy was, “Wow, this looks a lot like Pidgin.” Briefly, the interface looks like this (screenshot borrowed from the Empathy site):
The Pidgin interface is good, and I can understand why the Empathy developers would emulate it. Less understandable, however, is why Ubuntu should switch to Empathy if it doesn’t offer anything new in the look-and-feel department.
On the features front, Empathy is clearly lacking. Compare its Preferences dialogue:
to that of Pidgin:
Granted, Empathy is still in development, and Pidgin has been around for years. But I don’t see any earth-shattering new features planned for Empathy anytime in the future. I see only stuff that’s been around in Pidgin for a while.
Empathy’s one distinct advantage over Pidgin is the integration of video-chat and VOIP support. This is nice, especially since Pidgin has no plans to adopt these features. On the other hand, numerous video-chat options already exist for Ubuntu, including proprietary Skype and the free Ekiga client. Empathy’s not doing anything particularly innovative on this front either.
The Empathy developers promote its integration with Gnome libraries as one of its advantages. This might be nice for Linux distributions that only support Gnome, but Ubuntu needs to keep users of other desktop environments, namely KDE and Xfce, in mind as well. If the Ubuntu developers abandon Pidgin and embrace Empathy as the default instant-messaging client, Kubuntu and Xubuntu will be left behind.
No substitute for Pidgin
Empathy may become a fine instant-messaging client as more features are added. But Pidgin already does a great job of sending instant messages across multiple protocols, and has all the options and add-ons that most users need. In the absence of any compelling advantages to Empathy, I don’t see a reason to abandon Pidgin anytime soon.
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Options are not features. “Just works” is better than “it’s your problem”.
What Pidgin doesn’t do is provide a method for deep integration into the entire desktop environment — Empathy, based on the Telepathy messaging infrastructure, will.
I hope that Empathy serves to motivate Pidgin developers.
I, for one, consider “integration with Gnome libraries” as a *disadvantage*, rather than an advantage.
Sadly, I’m probably in the minority.
Nah I agree ushimitsudoki.
It offers nothing new.
KDE is not supported by Ubuntu, so I understand why they want this. They will be sorry because KDE is the only wm which really innovates. Let’s see what happens when KDE 4.3 is introduced.
I’m with the author on this one.
I’ve tried Empathy repeatedly, and I keep coming back to Pidgin because it does what it does well. If the Pidgin folks added VOIP/Video Conferencing and skinning capabilities I doubt I’d ever consider anything else.
Options != features (Jeff already pointed this out).
But yes, Empathy is on it’s merry way to replace Pidgin. It’s not there -yet-, but it is the future.
Why? Because it’ll do everything Pidgin does and more. The telepathy framework is already paying off - you have programs that can intelligently manage your status, contacts because of it.
For example, Spicebird devs embedded Telepathy in their program - not only did they have to do very, very little work to gain full IM support to all major networks, but the contacts management and your online status is shared across all telepathy-based programs (so empathy and spicebird). This kind of intelligence is the way to go.
Telepathy is the way forward for Gnome, just as GStreamer was the way forward. Sure, it sucked more than libxine for a long time (an still lags in two or three areas), but it provided a unified A/V platform for the Gnome desktop.
Telepathy will be the IM, VOIP, and video chat platform. Gnome applications will be able to reuse code and enable these functions simply, the way they add audio and video playback now.
Empathy is behind, but the core it sits on is more advanced. When you understand that Xavier was working on it mostly alone until a couple of months ago, you appreciate how immature it really is. The Gnome devs knew that it wasn’t ready when they put it in the default Gnome desktop for 2.24, and in fact they hoped that the inclusion would finally push the development forward and attract greater numbers.
The configuration for Empathy also mirrors other Gnome apps, which remove as much configurability as the devs feel feasible.
Read my Empathy article from when it was accepted into 2.24 for more info (760 diggs or so):
http://blog.ibeentoubuntu.com/2008/08/gnome-has-empathy-for-you.html
What would be interesting visually with empathy, is it you were able to theme it, on my OSX Partition, i use AdiumX http://www.adiumx.com/ and it has the ability to theme the entire interface, this isn’t a great feature, however pleasant. What i do like about Empathy, is the fact its given the Pidgin team a right roay boot up the rear end, a little competitiveness is good. Maybe as Linux users we might get long awaited features such as Video Conferencing, somthin which Pidgin lacks.. also, and yes, i know its proprietary, a link into the ailing Skype system..
Empathy will support AdiumX skins… There is already work on it. I like Empathy.. Pigin is so big and “slow”. Empathy is fast and direct. Come on, you know that… Everybody don’t even use all their functions…
If it includes video chat for MSN and Yahoo! then it’s got my vote over Pidgin.
At the moment Pidgin doesn’t support webcams. Which leaves me at a disadvantage because my friends on Windows all use webcams. I’m the faceless Linux guy.
Without webcam support I don’t see any point in adopting anything new.
Believe it or not, voice and video chat is on it’s way to Pidgin- I just tested it earlier today. We the developers need help with it (especially testing), so volunteers are welcome.
As for the article, I don’t find it surprising that the interfaces are the same- they’re both based on GTK, and look&feel standardization is the whole point of sharing a toolkit.
Pidgin will not cooperate with Gtalk and uses too much memory
I’d simply like there to be a good alternative to only having Pidgin as the only stable, mature multi-protocol chat client. Over the last couple of years some things in Pidgin have really frustrated me but it is stable and well-developed. Everytime I try Empathy I vomit and come running back. Why Gnome chose such an immature app beats me.