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Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation 2

Last week I wrote about the suboptimal state of instant messaging in Fedora Workstation with some thoughts how it could be improved. I also asked Fedora users on Facebook and Google+ what IM clients they use. Especially in the case of Google+, I gathered votes from a number of people which is large enough to draw some conclusions.

I used different methods on FB and G+ because unlike G+ FB doesn’t support polls, so I asked people to submit their answers in comments. That grew much fewer answers, but people were not biased by pre-picked answers. Here are the results:

fb-clients-chartAs you can see there are pretty much just four IM clients that are widely used by Fedora users: Pidgin, Skype, Empathy, Telegram.

Google+ supports polls, so I created a poll where users could pick one of those answers: Empathy, Pidgin, KDE Telepathy, Other, or “I don’t use a desktop client”. Over 1200 users voted which is significantly more than on Facebook and gives a good statistical sample. And the results?

gplus-clients-chartPidgin is a clear winner, winning by a larger margin than among FB users. What is also interesting is the number of people who don’t use IM desktop clients any more – 37 %. This group is probably over-represented in this poll because it’s obvious that G+ users will favor web tools more than others since Google is such a proponent of web apps. I also asked users to add the name of their favorite IM client in the comments under the poll if it’s not among given options. And these are the results:

gplus-clients-othersEven though I was asking about desktop clients, most people voted for Hangouts which is not surprising on Google+. Some of them even consider Hangouts a desktop app because the Chrome app can partly behave that way. Telegram is also very popular among Fedora users on Google+.

And some conclusions?

Empathy – in both surveys Empathy lost to Pidgin which is not a good score for a default client. If alternative clients are more popular than the default one, then the default one is not doing a good job. Based on the comments, what people don’t like about Empathy is that how it behaves in GNOME 3. Transforming it into a single window would probably solve most of the complaints, but in the long run Empathy would need much more than that and is anyone interested in developing it? Now, it’s totally dead upstream.

Pidgin – is the most popular IM client among Fedora users even though it was ousted from the position of the default client many years ago. People don’t seem to be very enthusiastic about it, it hasn’t seen any higher development activity for years, but it’s still the best what we have according to most users. Going back to Pidgin as the default client would probably be the safest option. Unlike Empathy, it doesn’t have integration with GNOME Online Accounts, but apparently it’s not a significant inconvenience for users if they still prefer Pidgin to Empathy. However, in the long run we will hit problems that are related to very little upstream development activity – no GTK 3 port, no Wayland support, no HiDPI support etc.

KDE Telepathy & Kopete – I was quite surprised that KDE clients got so few votes. KDE is not as popular as GNOME among Fedora users, but it has a sizable user base. Does this mean that KDE users don’t use desktop IM clients any more or do they prefer Pidgin? In comments, I found several users saying that they use Pidgin in KDE.

Telegram – I was really surprised by the popularity of Telegram. I personally don’t know anyone who uses it, but it looks like it could be the new #1 IM service for open source enthusiasts as Jabber was in the last decade. It’s the only (at least a bit popular) modern IM service that is trying to be open and focused on privacy. It has a Linux desktop app written in Qt. You can find it in Copr although it’s not packaged very well and the app is missing an icon. I’m not sure how easy it would be for the package to make it into the official repositories. The website says they’re using slightly modified Qt which could make it difficult. There is also a plugin for Pidgin which doesn’t support advanced features, but works well for simple chat communication (again available in Copr). If we pick Pidgin as the default browser again, we should have this plugin pre-installed since Telegram seems to be becoming more and more popular.

Skype – ended second among Fedora users on Facebook. This IM service seems to be very popular even after a decade of its existence. Skype can’t be included in Fedora due to its license, but they provide an RPM package and it’s pretty easy to install it. Its protocol is closed, so we can’t really have support for it in open source clients, but maybe we can do a better job in integrating it to the desktop since it’s so popular among our users?

Hangouts – another popular closed service. Well, it’s not closed completely. Google still allows users to connect via XMPP, but you won’t get the advanced features and according to their plans they want to drop XMPP support anyway. So looks like the only way to give users Hangouts in the future will be the Chrome web app. Integrating web apps is in our Fedora Workstation tasklist. So things like converting Chrome Rich Notifications into standard desktop notifications, or installing the most popular Chrome web apps directly in Software would be worth looking into.

Facebook Chat/Messenger – no one really mentioned Facebook Chat which now has its own app – Messenger. People probably still don’t see it as a standalone service or don’t consider it a desktop app in any way (unlike Hangouts). However, it’s probably the most popular IM service nowadays. It still supports XMPP, but AFAIK they’re planning to drop it as well. Until then it works well with both Empathy and Pidgin. But after they drop XMPP, we won’t have many choices left. Maybe we could at least provide the web app messenger.com through Software?

GNOME Chat – some people also suggested that we drop Empathy and create a new app that should be part of the GNOME core apps. It would be based on Telepathy, so nothing like building it from scratch. It would fit very well to GNOME 3 (unlike Empathy) and it wouldn’t suffer from problems of Pidgin (Wayland, HiDPI support,…). There are even some designs and even some existing code, but no one has touched it for two years. So it hasn’t really stirred a lot of interest among GNOME contributors.

It all comes down to a question whether we want to provide one well integrated client that supports several IM services and whether it will even be possible in the future because the most popular services are closed or going to be closed, or whether we should give up our client and rather focus on supporting and integrating those dedicated, very often closed source clients. I always preferred to have one integrated tool for all IM networks, but the world seems to be going the other direction.

17 responses to “Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation 2”

  1. Jaroslav Reznik Avatar

    I stopped using desktop clients altogether too. I use my phone for basic communication and as notifications platform. And usually if someone is pinging me, it’s from Facebook. So I just open Facebook.

    For Kopete/KDE Telepathy – Kopete is dead for years now and KDE Telepathy is still catching up and it’s still far away from what Kopete was. And also there’s same issue as with Empathy – it’s not standalone client.

    About popularity – come to our 2nd floor, it’s Plasma 5 land :).

    1. danvratil Avatar
      danvratil

      I’m already working on converting the ground floor 😉

    2. robertkratky Avatar
      robertkratky

      Kopete may be dead, but I still find it to be the best client for my needs. After several unsuccessful forays into the land of Telepathy, I always came back to Kopete. Alas, I missed these polls and didn’t vote 🙂

  2. asterix Avatar
    asterix

    Given the severe privacy implications with all Google/Apple/Facebook/Microsoft services their chat software should not be integrated or supported by GNOME or Fedora in any way. People should not be encouraged to use those services.

    Instead it would be much better if Empathy would finally get OTR support. Without it you can hardly even consider it an alternative to Pidgin. Doing such a survey on Google/FB is quite biased anyway, as users of those platforms obviously don’t care about privacy at all.

  3. […] way to support Fedora’s mission of the advancement of free and open source software. See also part 2 and a followup on the desktop […]

  4. Jane Muskoviz Avatar
    Jane Muskoviz

    Binfer instant messaging is secure and private. There is no charge to it. The link is http://www.binfer.com

    1. ho Avatar
      ho

      The next company, the next proprietary…awful website rendering.

  5. ho Avatar
    ho

    If we implemented special interfaces for company owned chat-services we’re just playing by their rules and we therefore will always loose. Just let the web-browser handle their web stuff:
    I already see this in GNOME:
    facebook: realiable API?
    owncloud: reliable API?
    windows live: reliable API?
    pocket: reliable API?
    foursquare: reliable API?
    windows live: reliable API?
    google: reliable API? (remember that hickups with 2-way auth? awful)

    Considering that GNOME needs a half year or more to adapt a change, and another half year till changes arrive on downstream this is just a maintenance nightmare. Oh wait! Debian and Ubuntu are since some days available and still on GNOME 3.14, in case of Debian for the next five years.
    In that timespan startup X founds service Y, Google copies that stuff, fail with that stuff and drops that stuff and startup X got bought by Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook or Whatever you name it. If I’m forced to use such a service or If I want to use such service, I would always use just my browser.

    XMPP is the way to go, still, because it the right thing to do. It a complicated standard, like Email or HTTP. But it its a standard. If there emerge another standard, telepathy should get support for it. This is reliable, we expect heavy usage and a native application would bring much convenience and comfort.

    My suggest:
    I would improve Empathy, which gives the most benefit. Existing, already working and working with the stuff from the future (GNOME-Shell, GTK3 and Wayland). It really could need some kind of improvement. OTG would be nice too, as some said already.

    Second way, more work: Gnome Chat.

    Third way:
    Port Pidgin to Gtk3, integrate with GNOME-Shell, drop Empathy/GNOME-Chat and remove the Online-Service stuff (maintenance burden killed).

  6. Sumit Bhardwaj Avatar

    I converted to Gnome 1.5 years back from Plasma Workspaces. On Plasma, I was using kde-telepathy and on Gnome I use Empathy. One solid reason for the same is shell integration. Empathy integrates with online accounts, and if they give Empathy (and the default Email client perhaps ) a dedicated place in the new Notification dropdown of Gnome 3.16 (for launching, a button or something like that and the notifications can come normally with other notifications), Empathy has no issues as per my personal use.
    As of now, I used the chatstatus shell extension to keep empathy’s status in check and launch it. It just needs little bit of more shell integration and of course, some developer love to make it perfect.

  7. Petr Břeň Avatar

    I currently use Pidgin because I need OTR support. I remember someone suggested elsewhere that it is impossible to ever implement OTR support in Empathy/Telepathy because it would violate some principle, but I don’t remember what it actually was (something with TLS encryption being better than OTR?). Do you have any idea about it? Because if there’s OTR support in Empathy I could move there, but until then I have to stick with Pidgin.

  8. […] Telegramu jsem věděl nějakou dobu, ale dostal jsem se k němu teprve nedávno, kdy jsem dělal průzkum mezi uživateli Fedory, jaké klienty pro rychlou komunikaci používají, a Telegram byla často zmiňovaná […]

  9. korboc Avatar
    korboc

    of course it’s nice and quite important to listen to users and see what they use – like finding out people still more and more us proprietary stuff, even on a Fedora desktop. but that’s not the only way to go. There needs to be a ‘free’ way to go… I don’t want to be rude, but it seems ridiculous to think (after your poll) that people prefer non-desktop-client chatting over a properly integrated chat client….. well there is no perfectly working, well integrated to Gnome, and maintained, actively developed client at the moment 😀 so the result of your poll is quite logical. How do you think the results would look like when we would have Empathy up to today’s Gnome standards, or perhaps a finished-polished Gnome-Chat client? there are far too little ‘attractions’ by Gnome in this area, at the moment, unfortunately. you can’t expect people to prefer to do stuff ‘the gnome way’ when there workflow/solution istn’t finished/implemented properly. I now that basicaly this is what you’ve pointed your article to..I just wanted to add that one should never underestimate the power or impact of well designed, well implemented and polished solutions to anything. while free, they’re unbeatable, attractive and market-changing 😉 so keep up the good work! and please, don’t ditch chat integration! rather expand, finish it!

  10. […] known about Telegram for some time, but hadn’t tried it out until I conducted a survey asking what IM services Fedora users were using. It caught my attention because it ended up […]

  11. […] 使用者是否真的比較很常用 Telegram,就 Fedora Magazine 提及 Telegram 的一作者的說法,那 Telegram 的確佔有一席位。可是過往中文的 Linux […]

  12. catafest Avatar

    irssi.x86_64 : Modular text mode IRC client with Perl scripting

  13. […] sabia sobre Telegram durante algún tiempo, pero no lo había probado hasta que dirigió un encuesta preguntando qué servicios de mensajería instantánea Fedora los usuarios estaban usando. Me […]

  14. […] Telegram 有一段时间了,但直到我才尝试过 进行了一项调查 问什么 IM 服务 Fedora 用户正在使用。 […]

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