Are Free Software IM clients ugly?
- Published January 25th, 2006 in Tech Comment, Free Software
Some argue that Free Software IM clients are ugly or lack several features. Starting with the latter, I most definitely disagree about lacking features. Gaim, for example, strives at supporting several protocols and several operating systems at once so it’s hard to reach parity with the original clients. Nevertheless, there’s been incredible ground work being achieved.
Meebo, a Web 2.0 IM client, is basically gaim with a neat AJAX frontend. But what really brought me writing this was Adium. Adium is a Mac OS X IM client that makes use of libgaim and provides a wonderful UI. So, the features remain those expected for any client based on libgaim but it looks much nicer. And yes, it is Free/Open Free Software from the bottom of GPL’s heart! That counts a lot to me.
Another myth was broken.
It’s interesting, though, that you had to get into Mac world to find one that looks good. I do agree about Adium (I use it all the time myself), but the point still stands as far as the Linux arena is concerned. I expected eye-candy improvements for Gaim v2 but it just didn’t happen.
And a little eye-candy never hurt anyone… ;-)