I don't think I have to introduce Pidgin, but if you have really never heard of it, I can say that it's a powerful instant messenger, Visit http://pidgin.im for more details.

As you might have noticed, Pidgin in the repositories was at version 2.7.7, while the upstream is already at 2.10.x. I felt like there were too many bugs not fixed and features missing, so I gave compiling it a try. Apparently, it went alright and the updated packages are in the repositories.

To accomplish this, I created a diff between vanilla 2.7.7 and nix_nix's 2.7.7 (current version in extras and extras-testing). Then applied it to vanilla 2.10.2 and fixed conflicts. This means credit goes to Pidgin's team and nix_nix. I also managed to fix some problems with the buddy list.

What's new? A lot, see the official changelog for details (http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/ChangeLog). The only Maemo-specific change is improved handling of the buddy list. The package is compiled with encryption for Gadu-Gadu (don't forget to enable it in the account settings).

Status area and notifications plugins from the repositories seem to work fine with this version.

Downloads: the newest version is available in extras-devel and an older one in extras-testing.

More plugins! If you think that there's some kind of functionality missing, there's a chance that the remedy is within a huge pack of plugins called Purple Plugin Pack (see http://www.guifications.org/projects...ginPackPlugins for a list) and now it's in the repositories too. There are so many plugins that I can't test them all on my own, so don't be surprised if some of them don't work. Please report such cases in this thread, so I can fix problems or exclude broken plugins from the package.