i am actually using pidgin since a year(it was previously called gaim)... i thoght the only defect was the file transfer capability but now our pidgin team has done that also.... i am very very happy about this and please use this.... this is flawless... it doesnt crash like yahoo messenger... i am a fan of this software.... download enjoy....

Hallo,
I just install Pidgin in Ubuntu 7.10 all was OK. I log in Yahoo Messenger but I do not found my Buddy from Yahoo which I had used in Windows. In windows in the past I had Gaim
and I could transfer all my contacts from others messengers.
Yours sincerely
QuitMonty21

I've been using various versions of this fantastic program for a while now, under linux and Windows.

One user mentioned that the official Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft clients are better choices... I just can't agree, since each official client allows you to use only its network. With Gaim (now Pidgin), you use one program to chat with friends using MSN, AOL, Yahoo, IRC, GoogleTalk/Jabber, and a few others. If you use official clients, you've got to have three or more clients running at the same time! Pidgin lacks video and voice support, which are currently under development.

I've enabled a very interesting plugin that adds Festival text-to-speech functionality. So now when somebody comes online/goes offline, or sends me a message, I hear a computer voice read it out loud to me. Really cool. :D There are tons of other plugins, as well, which let you customize how the program acts.

It is a great program that uses a tiny amount of system resources (much better than running three or more different - and often bloated, yes MSN messenger, I'm talking about you - clients at once).

On Windows there are better choices...like the OFFICIAL clients from Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL.

On Linux this is probably the best choice.