Our guinea pig for this post were few chat clients (both for GNOME & KDE).

We’ve tested them for their ease of use interface, plugins (customizations)  & of course capabilities to handle various protocols. There are really a great amount of IM protocols out there (checkout this list) and covering all these was a bit difficult job. So, what we tested upon were the most frequently used IM clients i.e Yahoo & Jabber (Gtalk) and results are following:

Best Yahoo IM Client : GYachE Improved

Best Gtalk Client : Empathy (Now I figured why Ubuntu chose it over pidgin)

Best Plugins : Pidgin (Of course what else you can expect)

Best Interface : Kopete (Really this deserves more than that)

INSTALLATION PROCEDURE

Kopete

If you are planning no voice chat then IMO you should go with Kopete. It has got a really simple & clear interface (probably due to its base environ KDE).

• To install Kopete go to Applications>Add/Remove Applications
• In search box type Kopete (always enable “Show all Applications”)
• Select Kopete Instant Messenger & click “Apply Changes”

It has also got plugins support with a brilliant notification icons.The configuration part was really well built.Kudos to the programmers….!!!

Pidgin

If you want a lots of plugins n stuff that can configured you should go for Pidgin.

It is available for Windows too, so probably makes easy transition for windows users

It is preinstalled in Ubuntu 9.04 but is replaced with Empathy in later releases and still if you want it then it’s available in Add/Remove Applications.

Pidgin supports more than 15 IM protocols with around 68 worldwide languages with features like customizable smilies,music tracker & lot more just via its plugins. Xfire users have a good news, Gfire is a very good plugin for Pidgin for chatting through the xFire protocol in Ubuntu.

But you might be probably thinking what the heck was special in Empathy that it replaced Pidgin.I figured it out as I was writing this post.

Emptahy: GTalk (Voice) For Ubuntu

We’ll Empathy seemed to be a hidden marvel. Though it might’ve been used but will get really more users after its entry as default chat client in Ubuntu. It supports many IM protocols (probably more than Pidgin does) but lacks plugins like Pidgin. Interface of both is quite similar. Empathy has got few skins but doesn’t support smilies like Pidgin (probably we’ll see this feature in later versions). Where Empathy scores over Pidgin is its ability to support voice calls (suitable for GTalk) though it still lacks the Skype Protocol. Its more like in the country of the blind people, the one-eyed man is king. Since I don’t want an IM clients war here what I feel is that there is a lot of scope for both the client to work upon.

Installation of Empathy is really simple. You may either go to Add/Remove Applications and search for “Empathy” or you may chose the following method if you want the latest version rather than the default one.For this you have to update your repositories, which is probably you’ve never done before. So let’s do it

To update repositories you may either choose the graphical way or the terminal(as always).

Graphical Way : System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager->Settings->Repositories

Terminal Way : sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Then you may add the desired values in that and for this instance its following :

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

As now we have updated the repositories its time to do the installation.

Press Alt+F2 and enter the following

sudo apt-get install empathy telepathy-mission-control telepathy-stream-engine telepathy-gabble telepathy-butterfly telepathy-haze telepathy-idle telepathy-salut telepathy-sofiasip python-msn empathy-megaphone-applet

    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

GYachE Improved : Yahoo! for Ubuntu

We’ll, there’s a reason why GYachE Improved (also known as GYachI) is mentioned over here.

GyachE is very good client for Yahoo, because it supports almost all the features like avatars, audibles including Voice & Webcam support.

The DEB Installation Package can be downloaded from here.

All these applications will be available in Applications>Internet

Gtalk CONFIGURATION

Finished with all and still not able to connect to GTalk then here’s probably what you’re looking for.

Set the following options in your IM client’s (or override the default values) configuration

SERVER : talk.google.com

PORT : 5223

Check “Use Old SSL”

Here is some info about the applications which you’ll be using:

1. OpenOffice.org: It is a free and complete Office Suite. It contains the following applications as a part of it:
   • Writer - a word processing software
   • Calc - a spreadsheet software
   • Impress – a presentation software
   • Base – a database management program
   • Draw – a vector graphics editor
   • Math – a tool for creating and editing mathematical formulae

You’ll really be surprise to see that OpenOffice.org has almost everything inspite of being free which it’s counterpart Microsoft Office 2003 had. We’ll not compare the Microsoft Office 2007 with OpenOffice.org 3.0 because of a different interface.

Most OO.o applications can be accessed in the Application —> Office menu

2. GIMP: GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is almost as powerful as Photoshop, but Photoshop users might find it’s interface a bit awkward.

GIMP can be accessed in the Application —> Graphics menu.

3. Brasero Disc Burner: As the name suggests, it’s a complete and simple Disc Burning software.

Brasero can be accessed in the Application —> Sound & Video menu.

4. Transmission: Transmission is a BitTorrent client which can be used to download torrents.

Transmission can be accessed in the Application —> Internet menu.

But but but, we’ll highly recommend installing Deluge as we feel, it is better than Transmission and gives you a ‘uTorrent-ish’feel.

Deluge can be installed by the following command: sudo apt-get install deluge-torrent or alternatively from the Synaptic Application Manager.

5. Pidgin: Pidgin is an All-in-one Instant Messaging client. It supports, Gmail/Jabber, Yahoo, MSN/Live, AIM, ICQ, IRC and everything right under one free program.

Pidgin can be accessed in the Application —> Internet menu.

6. Ekiga: Ekiga Softphone is a free VoIP and video conferencing client for GNOME and Windows.

Ekiga can be accessed in the Application —> Internet menu.