Chat on Skype via Pidgin on Linux (or Adium on Mac)
This is a big deal for me, I played with Skype back in the day, but never really used it much since it required a second client, and I have always used Gaim (which is now Pidgin) to consolidate all of my accounts into one client and didn’t want to break out of that mold, but now I don’t have to. Using the Skype API, Eion Robb has created a Pidgin plugin called Skype API plugin for Pidgin/libpurple/Adium. Now I just add my user to the Pidgin accounts tab and I can now chat via Skype in Pidgin just like I chat with all my other contacts. Note that you can’t do the video of Skype on Pidgin. Mac users note that you can use this on Adium (my fav OS X chat client), which uses libpurple, which is the backend for Pidgin, on Mac. So now I’m using Skype again, which is a propreitary app, thanks to them providing an API for the Open Source community to latch on to. Ah, the circle of life…
While this works, it’s still not as smooth as I’d like it - will Pidgin ever get video, or will it always be on the horizon like Gaim?
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