The decision to replace Pidgin with Empathy in Ubuntu 9.10 has not been without controversy, or second thoughts on the part of Ubuntu developers.  Much of the discontent centers around concerns that Empathy does not yet offer the features to compete with Pidgin.  With this in mind, I took a look at how Pidgin and Empathy line up when it comes to delivering the functionality that most people look

There already has been words about Empathy replacing Pidgin as the default IM client in both Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12. We are not sure whether Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic will have it or not but Fedora 12 is going to have Empathy as it’s default IM client for sure.

Pidgin is a popular open source client for yahoo messenger and other IM protocols. Yahoo recently updated their client and older versions of pidgin will be unable to login to yahoo. Learn how to do a work around.

With the integration of the Telepathy framework into GNOME, most distributions are dropping the old instant messaging favorite Pidgin, for the new upstream application Empathy.

I haven't loaded up an IM client since I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic). But I did today, and neither Pidgin nor the new GNOMEish Empathy would run.

The debate over whether to replace the cross-platform Pidgin IM client with Gnome's own Empathy IM client has been raging since Empathy was included in Gnome (Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy). It's that time in the Karmic release cycle, and the debate begins anew.

Empathy is the default IM client in Ubuntu starting from Ubuntu version 9.10 Karmic Koala. Though Pidgin was in many ways a favorite for a lot of people, Empathy has always been the better alternative for me. And it is good to have Empathy by default in Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx".

Have you guys already forgot Pidgin. I hope not. For starters Pidgin used to be the default IM client in Ubuntu up until Ubuntu Karmic was released. Then it was replaced by Empathy as you must have already noticed. Pidgin 2.7 was recently released with a number of improvements and bug fixes.

There has been lots of support as well as backlash for replacing Pidgin with Empathy in Ubuntu. Discussion has been going acruss multiple mailing lists and forum threads. Although Empathy has improved so much since Jaunty, it isn't perfect.