Ubuntu9.10 and Empathy

Alright, its been really a long time, since I posted anything to my blog. Many things happened in the meantime, and my computer was formatted a lot many times, and now I have an entirely different set of OSs. I installed Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala, and to my surprise my beloved Pidgin IM Client was missing in it, which I was accustomed to. I tried to use Empathy but its been not even an hour and I downloaded Pidgin and installed it. But Somehow it seemed to be unstable on my IBM Thinkpad laptop. Unlike the previous times, it crashes frequently and soon I have to run away from it. I had no option but to explore the new Empathy. I soon was able to configure it to my taste. It not only has full support now for voice chat (unlike the previous times) but also comes in handy with the full and stable support for the desktop sharing with anyone over the internet, in just a click of the mouse!

Anyways, I know as soon as we install ubuntu or any other linux distro, where the beginners have to struggle a lot to initially hunt for a suitable client where they can talk to their google-talk contacts. So here are the google-talk settings which seem to work for me ( but I shall not be responsible if it doesnt turn out for you ). Ok, here it goes-

1. Just Open your Empathy client ( I hope you know it, Applications-> Internet-> Empathy)
2. Press F4 or Edit->Accounts and click Add button at the bottom of the left panel
3. Select "Google Talk" as the account type and press "Create"
4. Enter your login name along with the "@gmail.com" extension. Eg. if your login name is ABC then enter "ABC@gmail.com"
5. Enter your password, in the space provided
6. Click Advance to expand the options and fill the following details:
1. Select the option "Encryption required (TLS/SSL)"
2. Select the option "Ignore Certificate Errors"
3. Leave "Resource" and "Priority" blank ( default value)
4. Enter the "Server" as "talk.google.com"
5. Enter the "Port" as "443"
6. Select the "Use old SSL" option
7. Click "Apply" and you are done
   

Empathy offers a lot of features, most of them are pretty much similar to the Pidgin, like (what I can think as of now)-

1. Configuring and Using multiple Chatting accounts like Gtalk, IRC, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN etc. simultaneously
2. Support for file transfer feature ( although you need to check the file transfer server for the accounts over which the file is meant to be transferred)
   
3. Audio Call
4. Video Call
5. "Share My Desktop" feature
6. Join Different Chat rooms
7. Few Themes also come bundled with the application
8. Another feature which I liked more than Pidgin was the ease it offers to set the status message for all accounts at once (ya, its true, you have to sacrifice the facility of being able to set different status messages on different accounts)

Here is a screenshot of the application, for those who want to know how it looks :)


Happy Chatting !