Comments on: Pidgin vs. Empathy: Feature Comparison

By: rba

rba — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:59:26 +0000

When you mention features and supported things, it’s also good to mention how things work – how stable things are. For example the so called support for Skype in Pidgin via plugin is a 100% d*ng. I know many people (not only me) who tried this out and it always ends in crashes usually with Pidgin but sometimes even with both Skype AND pidgin. By Empathy the video chat is experimental and frankly I don’t know anyone who managed to make it work. A very important thing that you missed is the ability to transfer files in Empathy. I use it (I don’t like Pidgin very much) but still this is an obvious flaw. I use ICQ, MSN and GoogleTalk. File transfer is possible only with GT, although the other 2 protocols support it too.
I can go on and on but I don’t want to. And as a matter of fact @Jason said what I think too at the end of his/her post.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:36:36 +0000

The proxy for Empathy is handled by the proxy settings on ubuntu, you configure it once and then you don’t have to worry about it. unlike pidgin you have to re-enter it to make it work.

I am surprised at how many people do reviews of Ubuntu that know nothing about it, and then in their review they say “What I deem important”. For the record what you deem important really doesn’t mean jack to the rest of us.

Maybe if people would do a review of the product from a stand point of functionality, instead of their own selfish needs then we would be better reviews

By: Stephen C

Stephen C — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:51:32 +0000

Having tried and failed many times to get Google Talk Voice working on my computer, would it be possible for someone to post a video on Youtube showing how to set it up and it actually working (i.e. talking both ways)?

By: RudyD

RudyD — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:06:28 +0000

to @20. @bigbrovar : I dropped empathy for a short in this release. I never save passwords. Empathy have no option to ask for a password at login. It ‘must’ save it. Could not figure out how to tell that not to do it.

By: Troy

Troy — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:20:03 +0000

There is a check box in the “File Transfer” box for Empathy, however file transfer DOES NOT work in Empathy for Yahoo.

The one thing I need to do is transfer simple files across Yahoo. Empathy fails this so I will continue to use Pidgin.

By: yuan

yuan — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:09:27 +0000

Can anybody transfer file between gtalk and Empathy? My Empathy(2.28.1) is coming with ubuntu 9.10. When I try to send file to gtalk account, it always failed. I learnt that Empathy can transfer files to gtalk via XMPP, but how to make it work?

By: MDxm

MDxm — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:44:21 +0000

Ok, but Pulseaudio is working great in Karmic final release for me.
I bet the point Canonical choose Empathy instead of Pidgin is because they see greater potential in a Gnome foundation project than some offshore Pidgin who yet has to; and seem unwilling to support FAST file-transfer and audio-video to and from MSN users.
Sheesh..

By: Yaro

Yaro — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:01:35 +0000

kkanzler – Actually, the last release or two of Pidgin supports both. OTR is a popular plugin these days.

What I can’t understand is why Canonical is going from a nice feature rich and higher quality cross-platform client like Pidgin for a pet project of the GNOME developers that doesn’t even approach Pidgin in awesomeness.

Of course, they’re also trying to put Ubuntu on the cloud, for no reason other than its the tech hype du jour. Same reason they threw Pulse Audio in there was because it was TRENDY, not because it worked better than the established software.

PA was so bad it drove me and a great deal of people I know from Ubuntu, SuSE, and Fedora. They wanted their sound to WORK.

Not that it affects me much, being an Arch user and can choose what my desktop has for myself.

By: kkanzler

kkanzler — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:11:48 +0000

so what’s more important: being able to see the other person while chatting or communicating via a encrypted connection? my choice is clear…

By: carlos

carlos — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:43:58 +0000

I’ve been using Empathy since 9.04 because it supported Google Talk… with video! Also I don’t remember having to do anything special to get Google Talk enabled, it was listed in the protocols list, is this gone in 9.10?