Pidgin is a chat program which lets you log into accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. It is compatible with Jabber/XMPP, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, and Zephyr, and many more chat networks with plugins.
Install the pidgin package.Notable variants are:
You may also want to install additional plugins from the purple-plugin-pack.
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The aspell package will be installed as a dependency, but to prevent all of your text from showing up as incorrect you will need to install an aspell dictionary. See the aspell article.
Pidgin has out-of-the-box support for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). Although AIM has officially ceased, unofficial AIM-based servers like AIM Phoenix operate and can be used on Pidgin by changing the server address in the AIM protocol account settings.
Install the purple-discord-gitAUR package.
Then add a new account, select Discord as the protocol, enter your Discord login e-mail address and its password.
Install the purple-facebook package. (or purple-facebook-gitAUR)
Then add a new account, select Facebook as the protocol, enter your Facebook username and password and login.
Install the purple-hangouts-gitAUR package.
Pidgin only comes with the original OSCAR ICQ protocol. Since December 2018, the old OSCAR protocol is no longer officially supported as it has been replaced by the newer WIM protocol. To make use of the new WIM protocol on ICQ, you should install the purple-icyque-gitAUR plug-in.
This is a small tutorial for connecting to Freenode. It should work for other IRC networks as long as you substitute the port numbers and other specific settings.
Go to Accounts > Manage Accounts > Add. Fill/select the following options:
Now go to Buddies > New instant message (or hit Ctrl+m
), fill 'freenode.net' in the textbox and username@irc.freenode.net, then click 'Ok'. Type:
The channel is irrelevant.
In order to register your nick, type:
Follow the instructions from the registration mail. For further help type:
This final step will add your channel to 'Buddies': go to Buddies > Add chat, fill the correct channel in the textbox named channel (#archlinux).
Install the libpurple-meanwhileAUR package. The 'Sametime' protocol will be available when creating an account.
Install the pidgin-sipeAUR package. If you are unable to connect, try editing the User Agent value in the Advanced preferences tab. Further details can be found in the faq page of the SIPE wiki.
Install the purple-skypeweb or purple-skypeweb-gitAUR package.
Install the slack-libpurple-gitAUR package.
Install the purple-rocketchatAUR[broken link: package not found] package.
Install the telegram-purpleAUR or telegram-purple-gitAUR package.
Enter your Telegram phone number when creating the account, after which you will receive an SMS text message with a confirmation code, which you will have to enter to authorize your Telegram protocol account on Pidgin.
Pidgin has out-of-the-box support for the XMPP/Jabber chat protocol. Some additional plugins exist on the AUR for support of XMPP extensions such as OMEMO (libpurple-lurch) or Message Carbons (libpurple-carbonsAUR).
Pidgin uses Libpurple 2 which stores passwords unencrypted (in plaintext) in $HOME/.purple/account.xml, see [1]. You can store them in a keyring by using a plugin like:
Pidgin has some privacy rules set by default. Namely, the whole world cannot send you messages;only your contacts or people selected from a list. Adjust this, and other settings in Tools > Privacy.
This is a plugin that brings Off-The-Record (OTR) messaging to Pidgin. OTR is a cryptographic protocol that will encrypt your instant messages.
First you need to install pidgin-otr from the official repositories. Once this has been done, OTR has been added to Pidgin.
Ctrl+u
. Scroll down to the entry entitled 'Off-The-Record Messaging'. If the checkbox beside it is not checked, check it.pidgin-encryptionAUR transparently encrypts your instant messages with RSA encryption. Easy-to-use, but very secure.
You can enable it the same way as Pidgin-OTR.
Now you can open conversation window and new icon should appear beside menu. Press it to enable or disable encryption.Also if you want to make encryption enabled by default right-click on a buddy's name (in your buddy list), and select Turn Auto-Encrypt On. Now, whenever a new conversation window for that buddy is opened, encryption will start out as enabled.
Pidgin-GPG transparently encrypt conversations using GPG, and taking advantage of all the features of a pre-existing WoT.
The plugin is available on AUR as pidgin-gpg-gitAUR. It can be enabled the same way as the previously mentioned ones.
Arch has other Pidgin-related packages. Here are the most popular (for a thorough list, search the AUR):
If you suspend your computer pidgin seems to stay connected for about 15 minutes. To prevent message loss, it is needed to set your status offline before suspending or hibernating. The status message will not be changed.
Therefore create a new systemd unit pidgin-suspend
in /etc/systemd/system
Take the following snippet and replace myuser with your user.
To make use of the Xfce system tray go to preferences and enable the system tray in the section 'Interface'.You can now close the main window and run pidgin minimized. You will also be able to see message notifications in the tray.
~/bin/history_import_kopete2pidgin.sh
with this code:~/bin/history_import_kopete2pidgin.sh
executable:~/bin/history_import_kopete2pidgin.xslt
with this code:~/bin/history_import_kopete2pidgin_filename.xslt
with this code:Save ~/.purple
to backup all message logs, accounts and other application data.
There was an issue if you would connect to the Sametime via Pidgin, it prompt 'Version Match'. A potential solution on the client side is to fake the version in accounts.xml. Insert/change the lines:
in the <settings> section of Sametime account in accounts.xml which is located in $HOME/.purple/ folder.
If clicking a link within Pidgin creates an error message about trying to use 'sensible-browser' to open a link, try editing ~/.purple/prefs.xml
. Find the line referencing 'sensible-browser' and change it to this:
This example assumes you use Firefox.
As an alternative if the method above does not work you can set the desired browser in the pidgin preferences in the section 'Browser'.
You can change encoding for ICQ account if encoding in Buddy Information is not correct:
Select Encoding: CP1251
(for Cyrillic).