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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Pidgin Indicator: Ubuntu AppIndicator Plugin For Pidgin

Pidgin uses the Ubuntu Messaging Menu but many people prefer its old tray icon, which you could whitelist to use the systray.

That's no longer possible out of the box with Ubuntu 13.04 and 13.10 because the Unity systray whitelist was removed (there is a PPA that restores the systray whitelist though) but luckily, Philip Langdale has created a plugin for Pidgin that provides an Ubuntu AppIndicator.

"I've found this indicator [Messaging Menu] to be much less usable than the original Pidgin tray icon, so I decided to build this plugin to restore the icon's functionality in a maintainable way (in constrat to having to run a patched version of Unity)."

- app description @ GitHub

Pidgin Indicator provides the same functionality as the original tray icon but a bit differently. For instance, to show the buddy list or unread messages you must middle click instead of left click (because left and right click on an AppIndicator do the same thing).

There is one small bug, but it shouldn't affect too many users: the Plugin Action menu items are not refreshed and you must restart Pidgin or reload the plugin to update these menu items. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future release.

Because there were no deb packages for Pidgin Indicator, I've uploaded it to the main failsdownloads PPA, for Ubuntu 14.10, 14.04, 13.10, 13.04, 12.10 and 12.04, so you can install it easily.

Install Pidgin Indicator plugin in Ubuntu

To install Pidgin Indicator plugin in Ubuntu, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/failsdownloads
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pidgin-indicator

If you don't want to add the main failsdownloads PPA, you can download the Pidgin Indicator deb from HERE and install it manually.

Once installed, open Pidgin and from its menu select Tools > Plugins, then scroll down until you see a plugin called "Ubuntu Indicator" and enable this plugin:

That's it, Pidgin should now use an Ubuntu AppIndicator.

For source code, bug reports, etc., see the Pidgin Indicator GitHub page.

How To Install Facebook (And Others) Emoticons In Pidgin [Quick Tip]

Quick tip: If you're using the new Facebook Chat plugin for Pidgin, you may want to add support for Facebook's official emoticons, so here's how to do it.

To add Facebook (including secret) emoticons to Pidgin, you can use pidgin-EAP, a project which provides emoticon themes for most available protocols, including Facebook. The pack even contains some sound and buddy list themes.

To install pidgin-EAP emoticon themes in Linux, use the following commands in a terminal:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/Hernou/pidgin-EAP/archive/master.tar.gz
tar -xvf master.tar.gz
cp -rf pidgin-EAP-master/{.fonts,.purple} ~

Or, if you want to install it manually, go to the pidgin-EAP GitHub page, click "Download ZIP" on the right, extract the zip and copy its contents to your home directory (note that the zip contains two hidden ".fonts" and ".purple" folders so you'll have to use Ctrl + H in your file manager to see them).

For Windows, see the instructions available on GitHub.

Then, open Pidgin, from its menu select Tools > Preferences and on the Themes tab select "EAP" under "Smiley Theme":

This will use pidgin-EAP's custom smilies for all the protocols it supports. If you only want this for Faceook, select "Facebook" from the drop-down instead.

Use Facebook Chat In Pidgin With Purple-Facebook

Facebook shut down their XMPP service earlier this year and because of this, Pidgin/libpurple no longer supports Facebook Chat. For those of you who want to use Facebook Chat in Pidgin, there's a new plugin which makes this possible, called purple-facebook.

The plugin has been in development for about two months and is still a work in progress, but it is already functional and most things work as expected, including opening existing group chats and creating new ones.

According to its wiki, the Facebook Chat plugin is already implemented for the development version of libpurple, purple3, which has yet to be released and the purple-facebook project is a backport of the purple3 plugin to purple2, the released version of libpurple which is used by Pidgin and other clients.

The reasons for using this plugin instead of a stand-alone Facebook Chat alternative are having all the messaging protocols in one place and of course, the tight desktop integration provided by Pidgin, such as native desktop notifications, taskbar alerts, Unity Launcher unread count and Messaging Menu support (for the Unity features to work, make sure the Unity Integration plugin is enabled in Pidgin).

At the time I'm writing this article, the plugin doesn't support chat/friend additions or removals, but these are on the todo list. Some more advanced features like link previews or stickers are also not supported.

Install purple-facebook in Ubuntu, Linux Mint and derivatives

To install purple-facebook in Ubuntu, Linux Mint and derivatives, you can use its official repository. To add the repository and install the plugin, use the following commands:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/jgeboski/xUbuntu_$(lsb_release -rs)/ /' >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jgeboski.list"
cd /tmp && wget  http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/jgeboski/xUbuntu_$(lsb_release -rs)/Release.key
sudo apt-key add - < Release.key  
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install purple-facebook

If you don't want to add the PPA, you can download the DEB from HERE (but you won't receive any updates unless you add the repository). Or, grab the source and build it yourself.

Arch Linux users can install purple-facebook via AUR. On Windows, follow the instructions from HERE.

Once installed, add a new account in Pidgin (Accounts > Manage Accounts > Add) and in the Protocol dropdown, select "Facebook" (important: NOT "Facebook (XMPP)"):

I should also mention that in the username field, you can enter either your emil, your Facebook username or phone number associated with your Facebook account.

Report any bugs you may find @ GitHub.

If you're a Pidgin user, also see:

plugin seen @ HumanOS

Install The Official Telegram Desktop App In Ubuntu Or Linux Mint Via PPA

Telegram is a free, cross-platform messaging app which, according to its developers, focuses on speed and security.

There are official Telegram clients for Android, iOS, WP, Mac OS X, as well as for the desktop: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (along with a web-based version, Chrome app) and quite a few unofficial clients. The official Telegram Linux desktop app is not packaged for Ubuntu so to make it easier to install, Lorenzo from atareao.es has created a PPA.

The Telegram desktop application supports desktop notifications, stickers (Telegram only has a few for now, but more will follow soon), sending and receiving attachments (documents or photos), adding contacts and so on. What it doesn't support is sending voice messages (you can listen or download received voice messages though).

It's important to mention that by using the PPA below, the Telegram auto-update feature won't work so you'll have to rely on the PPA for updating the application.

Install Telegram Desktop in Ubuntu or Linux Mint via PPA

To add the Atareao Telegram PPA and install the official Telegram Desktop application in Ubuntu / Linux Mint and derivatives, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/telegram
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install telegram

If you encounter bugs, report them @ GitHub.

Also see:

via atareao.es, thanks to Icy EyeG for the tip!