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The newest release of AIM 6.5, has become a big pain in my butt of late. With all the extra ads and graphical features, it seems like there will never be and end of features. With those features it just gets slower and slower to load. Even while instant messaging a friend AIM seemed to lag a bit.

That’s why I have switched to Pidgin 2.0. It’s fast, easy to use and you don’t need all those extra programs like MSN Messenger, ICQ, IRC and Yahoo Messenger. With one program you can connect to so many different IM clients like Jabber, XMPP, GroupWise, Lotus Sametime and AIM.

First if you’re a geek you can download the source and compile it your self. It’s installed by default in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. You can download Pidgin for CentOS or Fedora. It even runs on Windows XP and Vista. I’m sure there are other ports out there too.

The only drawback to having Pidgin running instead of some of the other IM clients, Voice and video chat are not supported yet. Possibly in the future these will be supported. If you’re looking for a pretty interface Pidgin is probably not for you. Pidgin is open source and developed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. The user interface leaves alot to be desired over other clients.

So, if you want a feature-rich IM application that ties almost every protocol together, give Pidgin 2.0 a shot.

Pidgin Download Page