How to IM just like you did in Windows

One of the next requests I normally hear from new linux users is how do I send instant messages? Although I'm not as bound to instant messaging, it is a major part of other peoples lives.

I've used the Yahoo IM in the past and the first thing I looked for was how hard it would be to install the yahoo chat client on Linux and after reading a few forums I realized that installing Yahoo IM would be a disaster. Sorry Yahoo, but true is true.

So I looked around a little bit and found a program already installed by default that would handle my yahoo IM's and more.

From the pidgin website they state "Pidgin is a chat program which lets you log in to accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on MSN, talking to a friend on Google Talk, and sitting in a Yahoo chat room all at the same time."

Pidgin supports the following chat clients AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google, Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo and Zephyr.

The only downside to this that I can find is that it can become confusing. I set up my yahoo account and my MSN account and before I knew it I had a long list of people and it was unfamilier who was messaging me from which list.

You can try to install individual IM clients for Linux if you can find one, You can try to install the Windows version using WINE, but for ease of installation, just stick with pidgin and enjoy.