According to wikipedia the last public version of Yahoo! Messenger for Unix was released in September 2003, while an unofficial beta (v1.0.6) from a Yahoo! employee was released around the same time.

But they keep upgrading the version for Mac? And now it is version 3.0.1 for the current beta released on March 26, 2010.

Yahoo Messenger has some great features that was making it so popular, and most of our customers was familiar with it, although there is an alternative like gyachi, kopete, pidgin, and empathy, our customers prefer to use Yahoo Messenger instead of those alternative instant messengers, and why?

Because Yahoo Messenger is so user friendly and easy to use, and one frequent reason is when using alternative instant messenger such as pidgin, most of our customer being afraid to create their account even without password.

The Linux / Unix version of Yahoo! Messenger is terribly outdated, and probably won’t even connect. The Windows version does not run well, even under Wine. The web version of yahoo messenger quite good but the customers still want the native version of it.

Yahoo Messenger On Mac

Yahoo Messenger On Linux

What we really need?

So do we need another yahoo messenger replacement? I dont think so, what we need now is an enhancement of current open source instant messenger program that could mimic the original Yahoo Messenger, and we are still waiting for it.

Pidgin

For me pidgin is one of the best multi protocol instant messenger I’ve ever use, really easy to manage your multiple account like msn, yahoo, gtalk, myspace, now in pidgin you can performs video conference with your friend via gtalk as well. See http://pidgin.im/about for more information.

Pidgin is a GTK+ instant messaging application for Windows and Unix. It supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE and more.

Empathy

Do you ever felt so piss off when using web browser to chat with your friend on facebook? For me I am so piss off with unstable connection during my chat session with web browser on facebook, but since I using empathy on ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04 LTS it seems all my problem was solved with empathy.

Empathy is a messaging program which supports text, voice, and video chat and file transfers over many different protocols. You can tell it about your accounts on all those services and do all your chatting within one application.

Empathy uses Telepathy for protocol support and has a user interface based on Gossip. Empathy is the default chat client in current versions of GNOME, making it easier for other GNOME applications to integrate collaboration functionality using Telepathy.

Current features

• Multi-protocol: Google Talk (Jabber/XMPP), MSN, IRC, Salut, AIM, Facebook, Yahoo!, Gadu Gadu, Groupwise, ICQ and QQ. (Supported protocols depend on installed Telepathy Connection Manager components.) Supports all protocols supported by Pidgin.
• File transfer for XMPP, and local networks.
• Voice and video call using SIP, XMPP, Google Talk and MSN.
• Some IRC support.
• For detailed list of supported protocol features see here
• Conversation theming (see list of supported Adium themes).
• Sharing and viewing location information.
• Private and group chat (with smileys and spell checking).
• Conversation logging.
• Automatic away and extended away presence.
• Automatic reconnection using Network Manager.
• Python bindings for libempathy and libempathy-gtk
• Support for collaborative applications (“tubes”).

for more info checkout : http://live.gnome.org/empathy

If you choose to use Kubuntu as your primary operating system for you cyber cafe, I highly recommend to use Kopete since most of cyber cafe visitor using Yahoo Messenger to do video conferencing, Kopete is the best choice as an alternative to Yahoo Messenger.

Kopete is an instant messenger supporting AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, Novell GroupWise Messenger, and more. It is designed to be a flexible and extensible multi-protocol system suitable for personal and enterprise use.

The goal of Kopete is to provide users with a single easy-to-use way to access all of their instant messaging systems. The interface puts people first, and is integrated with the system address book to let you access your contacts from other KDE applications. Instant messaging can be intrusive, but Kopete’s notification system can be tuned so that only important contacts interrupt you.

Kopete also features tools to enhance your instant messaging experience, such as message encryption, archiving, and many other fun and useful effects.

Kopete supports all commonly used instant messaging protocols, and the Kopete team provides templates for developers to base new plugins on. The API provides developers with many features to make it easy to support a new protocol. All protocols are plugins and allow for modular installation, configuration, and usage.

If you need help with any of its features, check the Kopete Handbook, accessible from the Help menu, or see the ‘Forum’ and the ‘Userbase’ links in the navigation bar. See the ‘Communicate’ section of the site to get in touch, or you can also always reach the team on IRC (irc.kde.org, #kopete).

for more info check out : http://kopete.kde.org

I’ve using Skype for years to voice chat or video conferencing with my friend’s, for me Skype is the best software for conferencing. But there is  no new version of Skype since the release or Skype 2.1 Beta 2 for Ubuntu 8.10.

As for me currently I just upgrade my laptop to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS without uninstalling old version of Skype, and it’s still running well without any problem at all. Skype for Linux is available in 32bit and 64bit.

The best thing about Skype is you can can use it with supported mobile phone such as IPhone to do conferencing and you also integrate it with Pidgin, all you have to do is install the Skype plugin for pidgin.

Hardware requirements

• 1 Ghz processor or faster.
• 256 MB RAM.
• 20 MB free disk space on your hard drive.
• Microphone and speakers or headset.
• Internet connection – broadband is best (GPRS is not supported for voice calls).
• Video card driver with Xv support.

Software requirements

• Qt 4.4.0
• D-Bus 1.0.0
• libasound2 1.0.18
• PulseAudio 0.9.16 (optional)
• BlueZ 4.0.0 (optional)

Technical detail

• Version 2.1.0.81

for more info checkout : http://www.skype.com

qutIM

qutIM – free open-source multiprotocol ( ICQ, Jabber/GTalk/FaceBook/Ya.Online/LiveJournal, Mail.Ru, IRC )instant messenger for Windows and Linux systems You can help us make it better, for example, with coding, design, testing, etc. It is a nice and good looking instant messenger for Windows and Linux systems.

Currently the protocols for twitter and MSN is still under development.

aMSN

This is for MSN freak only, if you new to Ubuntu Linux or others linux distro, and you afraid to use different instant messenger other then MSN, then you can use aMSN as the replacement.

A very nice MSN compatible messenger application, aMSN Messenger is a multiplatform MSN messenger clone. Works pretty much like its Windows based counterpart. Perfect for keeping in touch with those friends who have not yet seen the light. Works on linux.

aMSN is a free open source MSN Messenger clone, with features such as:

• Offline Messaging
• Voice Clips
• Display pictures
• Custom emoticons
• Multi-language support (around 40 languages currently supported)
• Webcam support
• Sign in to more than one account at once
• Full-speed File transfers
• Group support
• Normal, and animated emoticons with sounds
• Chat logs
• Timestamping
• Event alarms
• Conferencing support
• Tabbed chat windows

for more info checkout : http://www.amsn-project.net

But the FOSS community has come out with other alternative by making an alternative to Yahoo Messenger that’s can support all the YM features, it’s called Gyachi. According to the Gyachi website, the program is a fork from Gyach Enhanced Yahoo! client for Linux operating system. It was born purely out of impatience. Since there was no progress on Gyach Enhanced for about a year, a couple of impatient GYach Enhanced users decided to continue development of that client, fearing that original author Erica Andrews lost interest or abandoned project altogether. Therefore, in the true spirit of Open Source we, the developers, thought of simply “carrying on the torch”.[1]

This Yahoo! client for Linux operating system supports almost all of the features you would expect to find on the official Windows Yahoo! client: Voice chat, webcams, faders, ‘nicknames’, audibles, avatars, display images, and more. Yet, it remains very light-weight and memory-friendly. GyachE Improved uses Gtk-2 for its user interfaces (Gtk-2 2.0.6 or better required).[1]

I’ve try Gyachi before, although the interface is not smooth enough, I could say that Gyachi couldn’t attract my eyes enough to use it but the function works well. Between Gyachi and Pidgin interms for connection established, Gyachi is the winner for me, but right know, Pidgin still my best choice as instant messenger software for the moment.

Reference :
[1] – http://gyachi.sourceforge.net/intro.shtml