Revisited: Finally Adium for Windows.
At the time of drafting my original Adium for Windows article, I had no idea the level of popularity it would have. Oddly enough, my Windows XP laptop died not too long after writing the article.
Let me clarify something. There isn’t Adium for Windows. The developers have made it quite clear that, “Unfortunately, Adium is written with very Mac specific code. Porting it to another platform would require rewriting the entire application.” – Adium Trac This is unfortunate, because most Windows users are still stuck with AOL Instant Messenger, which is a huge resource hog. If Adium entered the PC market they would probably take away a lot of market share from AIM and Trillian.
With Windows XP, there are a few alternatives to Adium. Pidgin, which runs the same libpurple engine, is pretty basic. It uses GTK+ themes so there are plenty of the out there. In terms of overall customization, you are kind of limited by GTK. If you’re looking for a nice simple IM client that just works; Pidgin is for you.
Next is Miranda IM. I will be the first to admit, it is not as simple Adium or Pidgin, but in terms of customization this is the one you want. This program needs more polishing in terms of usability, but it sure is skinable.
There is also Trillian, but I never really got into it.
I also found this neat program called Ahoihoi, which is built on the Open AIM. It’s TOO BAD that it isn’t FREE, but there is a trial. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on a full version. It looks like it has potential. I don’t know if there are skins for it.
The bottom line is… if you want your IM client to LOOK like Adium, go with Miranda. It won’t be quite as easy to use as Adium is but at least you can have a better looking client.
You may want to check out the Comments on the original post as some of them are VERY helpful.
Comments (5 comments)
It would be helpful to have a list of ‘most wanted features’ Adium has, compare them to Pidgin, and then come up with some sort of ‘design checklist’ that an IM client would need to follow if it were to be ‘Adium for Windows’.
The reason I point this out is simple: I’ve been very tempted to write a Qt version of Pidgin/Adium. (I’m not alone, I know at least four other developers who’d hop on in true open source fashion.) the advantage of Qt would be pretty profound: 1) Theme-able (Yes, as theme-able as Adium, if not more so.) 2) Crossplatform. Any platform libpurple/Qt supported. (Which includes the Big Three, Mac, Linux, Windows) 3) It would be possible to get it included as the default IM program in KDE, which is pushing itself into not just a Linux dominance, but moving into windows, and Mac as well. (More a personal goal, not an advantage, as it were. Still being the default IM for a desktop environment would be a big boon for any OpenSource project.)
I guess this is just my thoughts on resolving the ‘adiumless’ windows dilemma.
Morgul / February 15th, 2008, 6:00 am / #
…the other thing that could *potentially* be done is to work on gnustep or cocotron (two attempts to do a different implementation of the cocoa API, the first one geared more towards linux (although it will run on windows) and the second one for windows) and see how much work is needed to get adium running on those.
I like the idea of implementing cocoa on windows and linux, because it’s a nice API, and would make it really easy to do cross-platform development.
TechMage89 / April 27th, 2008, 2:50 pm / #
I am looking for a Yahoo! Messenger client for Windows or Linux that will SPEAK out the messages. I have speakers on my stairs which can be heard from anywhere in my small house, and I had used Adium so that I can send messages to my wife from work and she can hear Adium speak out the text of my messages if she’s at home.
But the old iMac is dying and my wife’s new computer is a Windows machine (here in Malaysia, we could make a generic WinTel machine for only approximately US$150, while a new Mac would cost MUCH more than that, as we have to pay MORE than American prices.)
But I’ve not found a Windows or LINUX-based Yahoo client that can speak out the text of the messages yet.
Ian and Juliane / August 24th, 2008, 1:49 am / #
Definately check out Digsby if you haven’t. It blows everything else out of the water.
http://armsinfragilehands.blogspot.com/2008/04/adium-for-windows.html
Burke / August 28th, 2008, 12:50 pm / #
@Burke Too bad Digsby doesn’t have a version out yet for anything other then windows. I feel like windows users have never had a great client a la Adium for OS X…. and Digsby might just be that… I don’t know, haven’t tried it.
Tom / August 31st, 2008, 11:53 pm / #
Post a comment