This article introduces Empathy, a new Instant Messaging client in
GNU/Linux which supports Google Talk, Yahoo, Jabber and several other
IM protocols. Empathy is now a default application in GNOME-2.24 and
available in all the latest release of popular GNU/Linux distributions
like Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu.

Empathy consists of a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets. It uses Telepathy and Nokia's Mission Control, and reuses Gossip's UI.

As WorksWithU reported last week, the Gnome application Empathy was set to become the default instant-messaging client in Ubuntu 9.10 upon its release October, replacing Pidgin.  But Ubuntu developers have been reconsidering that decision in the last few days.  Here's the story, with some thoughts.

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

This is the third in a series of interviews about open source multimedia, the previous interviews were about Jokosher and Totem. For this interview we check in with Sjoerd Simons who works on the Empathy client, an which combines instant messaging, video conferencing and voice over IP into one application. Sjoerd will talk to us about the current status of Empathy and where it is going.

Empathy is an open source instant messaging client for the GNOME desktop environment. It made its big debut in GNOME 2.24, which was released in September.

The Empathy instant messaging client for Gnome is not yet ready to be the default client on your favourite Gnome-based distribution. In fact, I can’t even make it work!

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.

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".