Gaim is dead. Long live Gaim! (Well...Pidgin.)
 

AOL has finally succeeded at something they've been working at for many years: getting the Gaim project to change its name.

Read the full news post here: http://www.pidgin.im/index.php?id=177

Essentially, as Gaim approached 2.0, AOL increased its legal efforts and the Gaim developers were forced to work out a deal, in secret (by the advice of their lawyers), which ended in them agreeing to change the name. The result? Gaim is now known as Pidgin.

No, I'm not kidding.

The good news is that they are now clear to make an official 2.0 release which should be coming shortly.

EDIT: I should point out that the new name isn't totally lame. From Wikipedia:

odd... :eek:


Gaim 2.0.0beta6 (Windows) is open for download on the page. i installed it and it's not showing my AIM buddy list



edit:

i reinstalled it.. works amasing.... twice as good.... about to test out this psychic mode plug in. sweeet :eek: i hope it works as expected

Honestly, I like the fact that they're changing the name- I never liked the name "gaim" anyway. But honestly, I didn't even know that it originally stood for GTK+ AIM until I heard about the latest round of legal trouble and name change. Now I understand why they were so insistent that "gaim" didn't stand for anything. But more to the point, on more than one occasion, I have heard the lame and immature joke that Gaim is "Gay AIM..." not that it insulted me (oh no, I'm using an open source IM client... I must be gay, right?) but it just got annoying (note that most of the people who made this joke actually ended up using gaim after they saw it in action).

Damn.

I was about to say, "They should have called it Gay-m" :)

i've put some chat time down on this. it's better than the previous version and i love it. it's that much better and i'll be using this for awhile.


it has a psychic mode! when engaged, when someone opens a window and starts typing to you, it opens the window and tells you "i feel a disturbance in the force..." this is BEFORE they send you the message. soo if someone starts to type a message to you and changes there mind, without starting the convo, you will know. it is really cool. :-)


also it has a smooth scrolling chat window, whenever you or your bud type something new, the chat list scrolls up smoothly



the away message stuff is way more functional.

chat windows are better

But the UI still really ugly.

I wouldn't call the UI ugly, it's more like...minimalist. I don't want all the bloat that comes with AIM (stock quotes, AIMToday...etc)

i should mention, direct connection image transfers work well with the new beta version of GAIM! if someone send you huge image, it will adjust it to match the size of your window, which regular aim never did.

Google talk is pretty minimal too, but it has a nice looking UI (with the exception of the overly large "Google Talk" logo).

I've always been a fan of gaim. I'll have to check out the new version.

Does this version have the always on top feature? I tried gaim a while ago and couldnt find any way to always keep my im window on top. I have always liked how minimalistic it is. Wish more programs were like that. I just dont need all that extra pointless wasted space.