If I’m installing an IM client on a Windows or Linux box I’m going with Pidgin. Pidgin is released under GPLv2, and has implemented (at present count) 16 IM protocols, ranging from the standard ones — MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, and Jabber — to the no-so-standard — Gadu-Gadu, MySpaceIM, and Groupwise to name a few. While this does require the GTK libraries to be installed on Windows, they have seamlessly integrated this into the installer, so there is no pain involved. There are lots of plugins available, including my favorite — Psychic Mode.

Adium is a cousin of Pidgin. Adium is built on the libraries behind Pidgin, and is only for Mac OS X. Where Pidgin doesn’t quite seem to carry the look and feel of Windows, Adium is 100% Mac in its look and feel. Adium also integrates perfectly with Growl. The protocol support is a little bit less with Adium compared to Pidgin, but I’ll never use the obscure ones it doesn’t support. It does, however, pickup support for the .Mac protocol.

You may say, “What about Trillian? What about iChat?” What about them? With Trillian, you have to buy the pro version to get the Jabber protocol. With iChat you only have .Mac, Jabber, AIM, and Bonjour protocols; no MSN or Yahoo! support. I’ve tried using Trillian and iChat, but I always end up back with Pidgin and Adium.

iChat does have one major advantage over Adium at this point: voice and video chat. While Adium (and Pidgin) is currently working on this issue, you have to go to iChat to take advantage of that functionality.

The Mac guy, the PC guy and a penguin are all standing around having a conversation. The Mac guy, of course, would be pointing out the flaws of Vista, but there would be a twist, the Penguin would be asking, “Why do I have to buy a new computer to avoid all of those Vista problems?”

All fun aside, he gives a strong call to arms for the enterprise Linux distros:

Commercial Linux vendors need to pay attention. The year 2007 very likely will become the year of change on the desktop thanks to Vista and the next generation of the Mac OS, and if the commercial Linux vendors don’t seize the day, the future may very well become bleak for Linux on the desktop.

Vista is not the “minor” migration that going from Win2k to WinXP was. Vista is a major upgrade, albeit with minor benefits IMHO. I know my company is going to hold out until SP1 before taking a serious look at upgrading our systems. Who knows even if Vista will be the preferred OS among users.

For years people have been wondering if Apple can get out of the home and media markets, and into the “regular” business world. I think Apple is in position now to make that serious push, especially with OS 10.5 coming very soon.

Is Linux read to move out from the server and tech enthusiast markets, and into the Joe Average Home User and enterprise markets? That’s a murky question. I like Linux, but I fit into the tech enthusiast category (my favorite distro is Gentoo BTW). I know the kernel is ready, but are Gnome and KDE ready for the non-tech world?

Is there enough momentum left in the Linux machine to take advantage of this situation, or has the fruit-train stolen the proverbial thunder from the penguin?

via Linux Today