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Add to SafariWhen comparing Pidgin vs Linphone, the Slant community recommends Pidgin for most people. In the question“What are the best Skype alternatives?” Pidgin is ranked 12th while Linphone is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Pidgin is:
Pidgin not only supports IRC, it also supports plenty of other services such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ and plenty of others. This way, you can have all of your conversations in the same app and won't have to deal with multiple chat windows being open.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Support for a wide range of additional chat services
Pidgin not only supports IRC, it also supports plenty of other services such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ and plenty of others. This way, you can have all of your conversations in the same app and won't have to deal with multiple chat windows being open.
Pro Free and open source
Pidgin and its code is completely free and open source. Pidgin has no ads and no features behind a paywall.
Pro Cross platform
The Pidgin instant messaging client is cross platform, working on Linux, Windows and OSX.
Pro Convenient notification features
Like other quality IRC clients, Pidgin features notifications that the user can set in order to have a variety of things happen when the users is mentioned, such as an audio cue or changing the system tray icon.
Pro Highly customisable with plugins
Pidgin not only has a large plugin library built-in, but also an array of third party plugins for a variety of functions.
Pro FOSS
Free and Open Source.
Pro Work well with FritzBox router
Pro Great SIP support
Basically every SIP provider supported.
Pro Simplistic and clean UI
Over the years, its UI has changed and improved by a lot.
Cons
Con Miserable IRC font controls (as of 2.13.0.17)
Does its best to avoid putting sensible default font controls in any place where you can get to it. And when it does grudgingly change it, based on system preferences (not local preferences), it does so in an inconsistent and unpredictable fashion.
Con No native VoIP support
While there are plugins there is no built in support for VoIP in Pidgin which is time consuming to implement instead of being baked in from the jump.
Con UI not very intuitive
Implementation of Contacts and missing calls are not very intuitive.
Splitted View (left Contacts, right Call-History) would be much better as current look&feel.
UI don't mind the "less clicks are better" philosophy. It looks a bit thrown together. Some Icons here, some there.. no navigation strategy are used (like known from webpages)
Con Limited to flatpack installs
Yet another container service to keep up with.
Con Doesn't ring on incoming calls
Even if the Audio-File exists and can be played in the Settings-Dialog, it doesn't ring for an incoming call. Worked some time ago, currently not.
Con No Plugins available to add external Address-Books for contacts
would be nice to be able to add NextCloud, GoogleContacts or other Cloud-Services, or just an local Address-Book (like Thunderbird)
Con Up-to-date version in 2020 can only be compiled from source
There is either an outdated version in Ubuntu repos, official flatpak install has been broken for over 6 months, so you're left with compiling from source.
