Tag Archives: Trillian

My Pidgin Ain’t Yodelling Today

Ah, the sounds of Spring…

Well, yeah, it’s the middle of summer but never mind that.  I have been having difficulties with my Yahoo connections.  I don’t use their bulky, rancid chat client.  No, I use a multi-protocol chat client.  My preferred client is Trillian but it doesn’t run perfectly on Wine (a Windows emulator I use in Ubuntu), so sometimes I bite the bullet and run Pidgin.

Pidgin is an open-source option for the multi-protocol chat clients.  Allow me to explain that for the uninitiated in the audience.  Pidgin is a program that allows one to interact within many chat venues—like Yahoo! and Windows Live and AIM—without having to run the proprietary software generously foisted on us by those behemoths.  (Pidgin also publishes its source code for all to enjoy.)

Of course those behemoths would prefer each of should use their chat client, adore the ads they place before us, and sacrifice our first borns on the alters of their corporate ledgers. But I digress.

These companies sometimes make changes to the manners in which their clients interact with their servers.  Standard operations for them.  Plays occasional havoc for the developers of applications like Trillian and Pidgin (and Adium).

Anyway, my Pidgin hasn’t been able to consistently connect to Yahoo for some time now.  After the usual research I found a couple of articles which finalized the problem (here and here).  Basically, Yahoo has changed its authentication method and Pidgin hasn’t caught up quite yet.

I went ahead and installed the beta version of Trillian Astra (their newest client, currently in beta) on my Ubuntu machine using Wine, but there are problems with the visual displays within those Trillian windows (specifically the contact list) which make it effectively unusable.

Hopefully the folks at Pidgin will be able to get this sorted out soon.  Alternatively, the folks at Wine might get the issues with Astra sorted out too.

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Trillian Wine Update

If you enjoyed my post on running Trillian under Wine on Ubuntu 8.04, you ought to really enjoy this post on running it under Ubuntu 8.10 and migrating your information over from your old machine/installation.

I have now confirmed that this will also work in Ubuntu 8.10. I saw no difference.

Also, it may be useful to know how easily one can migrate Trillian from one Ubuntu to another (and this may also work for moving Trillian from one Wine installation to another, irregarding the host OS).

Merely take the folder located at /home/[username]/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Trillian (get the entire Trillian folder), and move that into the same location on the new system (replace [username] with your actual username, of course).

I did the installation first and added nothing to Trillian, just clicking next to get through the installation. Then I closed Trillian, deleted the newly created Trillian folder, and replaced it with the old Trillian folder I just migrated. When I started Trillian again, I had everything—histories, passwords, &c.

Happy hunting.

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Trillian Comes to Ubuntu Thanks to a Little Wine

Well, I have installed my first Windows application using Wine.  Wine is a sort of Windows emulation layer for Linux distributions.  It allows one to run Windows applications within Linux (there is a version for the Mac OS also).

To install Wine in Ubuntu 8.04 pull up Synaptic (System —> Administration —> Synaptic Package Manager) and search for Wine.  Mark it for installation by right-clicking on the box before the name and then click the “Apply” button.

I chose to work with the one application for Windows I actually enjoy and would not like to be long without: Trillian Pro.  (It’s a multi-protocol chat client which the right combination of bells and whistles.)

I downloaded the Trillian installer onto my Ubuntu desktop and, giving it a right-click, I chose Open with “Wine Windows Program Loader”.  Wine started up the installer and, for all practical intents and purposes, the installer ran seamlessly as it would have running on Windows.  There were some issues with it being a little on the slow side but I attributed that to the Wine layer (latency perhaps?).

Once installed, you are taken directly into the setup area.  This too ran through without issues (excluding the aforementioned sluggishness).  I was able to enter account information for Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and ICQ.  Once the program started I was able to begin configuring the application to my liking.

Here is where the small troubles began.  There are certain areas within the Preferences dialog for Trillian which will crash the application if an attempt is made to enter them.  The Message Windows area and the File Transfers area will certainly crash Trillian if one should click on their icons in the Preferences dialog.  Avoid doing so except to test my claim.

Important:

You will want to ensure that you close out of the application and restart it after setting your passwords and preferences.  If Trillian should crash before you have done so all these changes will be lost.  So, make your preferences changes and then immediately close Trillian.  When you re-open Trillian you may feel free to test my claims above without fear that your passwords or preferences will revert to the defaults (or whatever was saved at the last clean close).

Finally, the menus behave a little sadly running this way.  The Trillian menu, for instance, opens as expected; however, as you mouse around it will vanish if a reset to the menu display is called upon.  For example, if you mouse over Set Status (which flies out) and then move to Connections the entire menu will go home and need to be called again.  Same thing will happen if you click on Trillian and then mouse over View.  Annoying but not a disaster.

Mostly it works but there are some issues.  There are a number of issues which were reported over at Wine’s site.  I am happy to continue testing where possible.

I hope this helps.

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