Pidgin 2.6.1 is released. Pidgin is the default IM Client for Ubuntu for a pretty long time now. And Pidgin went through a number of upgrades. But this time it is different. Pidgin brings in the much awaited Voice and Video support for XMPP and are hoping to get these killer features to other protocols as well.
In layman's terms, what it means is that now you can use voice chat and video chat in gmail. Though it seems latest pidgin is still a lil buggy. Voice and Video chat may not work as smoothly as it should possibly due to some dependecy issue. But really, hats off to to those who are behind this exponential improvement of our beloved Pidgin.
Feature List
- Video and Voice chat support for XMPP.
- Service discovery browser plugin.
- Idle time reporting.
- Attention ("buzzing") support.
- In-band bytestreams file transfer as a last-resort transfer method.
- Updated support for buddy icons.
- Full changelog here
Now let's see how upgradation (or installation) to Pidgin 2.6.1 can be done. You will have to add GPG key and new repo before you start with upgradation.
Adding GPG Key
- Simply Copy-Paste the following in terminal.
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys A1F196A8
- Done
Adding New PPA Repo
- Now Goto System > Administration > Software Sources and select Third-Party Software tab and click ADD. And Simply Copy-Paste the following Repo(depending on the version of Ubuntu you use)
For Ubuntu Jaunty
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
For Ubuntu Intrepid
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
For Ubuntu Hardy
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu hardy main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
- Afterwards close the window and Reload when prompted to.
- Done
Upgrading Existing Pidgin to Pidgin 2.6.1
- Simply do the following in Terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
- Done! You have the latest Pidgin 2.6.1 in your Ubuntu.
Installing Pidgin 2.6.1
- Again, do the following in Terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install pidgin
- Done and Pidgin 2.6.1 is ready to go.
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For this post, installed fine on Jaunty, look forward to trying it out :-)
Just use Kopete. It has been supporting video and web cam for years and now a plasma applet is being developed to integrate it with the social desktop project.
I followed your instruction totally, but apt can't see the new pidgin, it sees only the jaunty old one. What am I missing?
I am using Jaunty and all you need to do is 'sudo apt-get upgrade' after updating apt-get. YOu need not install Pidgin. Your default pidgin will be upgraded to the new version. Is this what you were looking for. Please confirm.
It doesn't works on my jaunty, because of 'libpurple' library problem.
i installed Pidgin succefully in Jaunty, and its working gr8, My friends are able to hear me but i'm unable to find their voice.. if anyone got solution for this problem please update us.. anyhow i will keep on trying ...
this version doesn't have voice and video support asctivate in default
regards.,
You may find that just doing 'sudo apt-get update' and then 'sudo apt-get upgrade' doesn't upgrade pidgin as it relies upon other new packages.
If you see that pidgin is being held back, then all you need to do to fix this is run
'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade'
Cheers
Cod
dist-upgrade will upgrade your entire ubuntu right ? why is it needed. I have tried it in Hardy and it was fine. :-?
thanks for the instructions.
I just installed pidgin from the above PPA on my machine (ubuntu hardy), but it refuses to run and exits with:
pidgin: error while loading shared libraries: libgstfarsight-0.10.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Has anyone managed to get it to run ?
I had tried it myself on Ubuntu hardy and it worked fine. And it should work, don't know why it is not :-? Anyone else facing the same issue here?
My mistake, it does work fine, but pidgin has not been compiled with audio/video support as confirmed in the about dialog box... not sure what to do from here to get the new video call feature on hardy. Any suggestions ?
Thanks
See this
http://www.pidgin.im/download/ubuntu/
He says
"
This PPA is maintained by one developer, so please be patient. It often lags behind the source releases a couple of days.
Voice and video support is only built on Jaunty (9.04) and up.
"
Apparntly the author of this post has not tested it in intrepid and hardy :D
Not exactly, i tested it myself on Hardy and Intrepid. And the upgrade will indeed work and pidgin will upgrade to version 2.6.1. But as i have mentioned in the post( if you have read carefully, you would have noticed :-)), voice and video chat won't properly work even in Jaunty. We will probably have to wait until the release of Karmic for the solution.
Why do they say on their site then that 2.6.1 supports voice and video on Linux when it doesn't? Or how about saying *only for developers* or *only if you tweak it* or something like that. It's an outright lie otherwise. Mine says "voice and video enabled" but they are always grayed out no matter what XMPP or Google Talk servers I try, even when trying it with another Pidgin user of the exact same version.
Pidgin gets a fail, for spreading hype about something that's clearly a VERY alpha feature, with no warnings or anything.
For most distributions, even Debian (which Ubuntu is based of off) Pidgin 2.6.x certainly does have voice/video support. The problem is actually Ubuntu, which doesn't currently provide the required dependencies to enable it.
Hi.
Pidgin 2.6.1 does not have voice feature in hardy.
Anyone else realised this also?
Cheers
thanks :)