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Add to SafariWhen comparing Pidgin vs Polari, the Slant community recommends Pidgin for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for UNIX-like systems?” Pidgin is ranked 6th while Polari is ranked 12th. 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 Great UI
The CSD-based UI is great to look at. No screen space goes entirely wasted and is presented neatly.
Pro Easy to use
Polari is very straight forward to use.
Pro GNOME-Integration
Polari integrates nice with GNOME, on a visual and technical level. It uses GNOME online accounts and runs empathy in the background.
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 Some advanced features are lacking
Polari's users will find some advanced features lacking, such as Direct Client-to-Client (DCC).
Con May seem too simple
Unlike Hexchat or other alternatives, it does not expose much of its functionality though some of it might really be present.
