How to add Twitter (twitgin) in Pidgin for Linux

Image via CrunchBase

Pidgin does not support Twitter protocol by default. Hence you need to install a plugin for that. There are a lot of plugins available to add twitter in pidgin. microblog-purple is one of such plugins availabe which is open source. It can be intalled in any Linux machine.

This is a plug-in for Pidgin to allow for seamless updating and receiving of Twitter messages. While originally built for Pidgin it works for other LibPurple base clients like Adium and Finch. Currently the plug-in works with Twitter only.

How to install in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu Users:

sudo echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu `lsb_release --short --codename` main >> /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu `lsb_release --short --codename` main >> /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0CF459B8DF37ED8B

Now do this:

sudo apt-get install pidgin-microblog

For Fedora Users:

yum install purple-microblog

How to run this plugin:

First, you need to enable the plugin. Open Pidgin and in Tools > Plugins and check "Twitgin". Then go to Accounts > Manage Accounts, click "Add" and in the "Protocol" List, select TwitterIM. Enter your id and password.

That's it. you are done.

Installing Pidgin 2.6.1 in Fedora 11

This is a brief tutorial on how to install Pidgin 2.6.1 with voice and video support for XMPP/Gtalk in Fedora 11. GTalk is supported by XMPP hence you can have voice and video chat using your gtalk id in pidgin.
Firstly you have to download the source from pidgin website from here.
Save it in your home directory. Then follow these instruction in Install from Tarball
Instead of doing ./configure in the second step you have to issue this command

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/ ./configure --enable-gnutls=no

After the Second step (i.e ./configure as above) you have to get this line

Build with voice and video.... : yes

If you don't get this line then you wont be able to voice chat. It means you are missing some plugins of Gstreamer or you have not installed some required dependencies which are optional for pidgin installation.

The required packages for your pidgin to support voice and video are:

• gstreamer-plugins-good
• gstreamer-plugins-bad
• gstreamer-plugins-base-devel

And

• farsight2
• farsight2-devel

To get all these packages you only have to do the following

sudo yum install libidn-devel gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-base-devel farsight2-devel

Copy and Paste the above line of code into your terminal and press enter. The yum package manager will install these packages.

After complete installation, run the ./configure again. You should now get the required output. If you stuck up somewhere in the middle then you probably have to install few more dependency packages. For the required dependency packages to install pidgin check this link here. If you still need any help then please use the comment link below to ask you queries. I will try my best to help you out.

Running voice and video chat:

Currently there is no way to configure your microphone or webcam in this release. You can do so by running this command from the terminal.

gstreamer-properties

This should work out. Currently it is working fine for me. I can do both voice and video chat.

To start Voice and Video you have to open the conversation window > Conversation > Media

Update:

Fedora developers has released the updated package for pidgin. Now you can install it with the YUM package manager.
Just do this from terminal as root:

yum install pidgin

Related articles by Zemanta

• Pidgin will not be in Fedora 12 (fedora-help.blogspot.com)
• Installing from Tarball in Linux (fedora-help.blogspot.com)
• Install from DVD using YUM installer (fedora-help.blogspot.com)

Pidgin will not be in Fedora 12

Image via Wikipedia

As I was going through the Features of Fedora 12, I was amazed to see this big change. Pidgin will not be default IM client in Fedora 12. Instead Empathy will be set as the default IM client. This means Pidgin fans have to install Pidgin separately. Same is the case with Ubuntu. Even Ubuntu is replacing Pidgin with Empathy. May be the main reason is that, Pidgin does not support Voice and Video chat. But for upgrades (from Fedora 11 to Fedora 12), Pidgin will remain the default. For new installations, Fedora will be using Empathy.
Source article

A detailed list of differences between Emapthy and Pidgin is available in this link: Pidgin vs Empathy

Pidgin was rocking as an instant messenger on my desktop. Never used Empathy, but have to try out and check the features of it. There is some sense in replacing such a good IM client with Empathy by the greats like Fedora and Ubuntu.

May be the reason behind Pidgin being discarded is that it never tried to support voice chat or video chat. So "Keep updated and survive" should be the motto for them.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to add Twitter (twitgin) in Pidgin for Linux (fedora-help.blogspot.com)
• Pidgin/Kopete (Yahoo) problem in Fedora Linux (fedora-help.blogspot.com)
• Front Panel Mic Problem in Fedora 11 (fedora-help.blogspot.com)

Pidgin/Kopete (Yahoo) problem in Fedora Linux

You might have faced problems logging into yahoo with pidgin. And pidgin throwing this error:

" Could not establish a connection with the server:Error resolving scs.msg.yahoo.com . Name or service not known"

The problem with pidgin connecting to yahoo server is that yahoo is upgrading some of its servers to match up with the new way of authentication. Upgradation of servers is not an issue at all. But the new type of authentication mechanism is making the pidgin not getting connected.

Anyway. Here is the temporary solution.
Change your Yahoo account's Pager Server field (located on the Advanced tab when editing the account) to 'scsa.msg.yahoo.com'.
Just press 'Ctrl+a' from the pidgin window. Then select an account and press modify. Then press the advanced tab and change the Pager Server field from scs.msg.yahoo.com to scsa.msg.yahoo.com
If this url does not work then try using this one cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com
This fix should work for the time being until yahoo makes further changes.

A better way is to update your pidgin to 2.5.8 until pidgin 2.6 arrives.

There is a same issue with KDE based kopete. Doing around with the above url should solve the problem. kopete is now coming up with an updated version.

Original source

Fedora 12 Release name as Constantine.

Fedora 11 is already released and planning for Fedora 12 is also going on. To codename Fedora 12 the red hat community gave a list of option to vote for. The options were

* Chilon
* Constantine
* Orville
* Rugosa
* Umbria

Fedora 11 is called "Leonidas" and has a link with the name of Fedora 10 as "Cambridge". Cambridge and Leonidas were both ships of the United States Navy. In the same way "Leonidas" and "Constantine" are townships in the state of Michigan, USA. It is said that the tradition is of creating linked pairs of codenames.

But the official mailing list of Fedora has a different story to tell.

As defined in the election text, the one (1) candidate with the greatest
number of votes will be chosen as the Fedora 12 Release Name.

So the greatest number of votes were put to Constantine and hence the name was chosen. So from now the Release name of Fedora 12 will be "Constantine"

Install from DVD using YUM installer

YUM is a package installer which uses internet to install packages. So what we do if there is no internet connection? If you do not have internet connection I recommend that you take one and keep yourself updated through YUM.
To install packages through DVD we need to have appropriate Fedora DVD mounted in the system. Once the DVD is mounted you have two options to install the packages from your DVD.

First, using the YUM option called localinstall. Go to the path from your terminal (to know what a terminal is check my other post here) where you have mounted your DVD. This usually should be /media/Fedora 11 i386 DVD. Replace 11 with your version of Fedora. Now go to the directory called Packages.

cd "/media/Fedora 11 i386 DVD/Packages"

Note that you have to use inverted comas. Now from here invoke this command:

yum localinstall RPM_filename.rpm

You can install a particular rpm file if you know or you can just give *.rpm in place of the RPM_filename.
This procedure will try to access the internet for any dependencies. For that the first thing you have to do is to disable the repos. To do this you should know what all repos have been enabled.

yum repolist

This will give you a list of repos with repo id, repo name and status. All you need is the repo id and use this command.

yum --disablerepo=fedora,livna,updates localinstall *.rpm --skip-broken

The --skip-broken option will exclude all packages with depsolving problems. Means those which have dependency problems. This should work with all versions of Fedora. the main drawback of this option is that you should know the particular package name. Or you can use meta-character if you dont know the exact name.

Second, and the most recommended option is by using a repo for DVD. YUM installs packages by checking the repo file. To know what a repo file is you have to check the content of an already existing repo file. Go to the repo directory of YUM.

cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

You will get a list of repo files with the extension .repo. Now use your choice of editor to create a repo file for DVD. I recommend using vi editor.

vi dvd.repo

You can give any name for this file which should end with .repo extension. Now type these line (or better copy paste it).

name=DVD for Fedora- $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=file:///media/Fedora%20$releasever%20$basearch%20DVD/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Do not do any other changes. Now save this file and run the YUM command. If you want your YUM not to check files in the internet you can edit all the repo files and disable them by changing the value of enabled to 0. Or it is better recommend that you use --disablerepo option for the YUM command as explained earlier.

The best thing about using this second way is that you can use all the option related to YUM. Example you can use the groupinstall option which you cannot use it with the first way. Again I stress the point that you use an internet connection to keep yourself updated to the latest changes in the world.

In case you have any problems installing the packages through YUM please revert back. I will try my best to solve it.

Happy YUMming!!! :)

Front Panel Mic Problem in Fedora 11

After Installing Fedora 11, I never tried my front panel microphone. But few days back when I tried to record some voice I found that it was not working. Then I tried it from the back panel, it was working and the voice was recording perfectly.

I tried to figure out what the problem is and I did some working around to fix the problem.
The solution is:

amixer -c0 sset 'Input Source' 'Front Mic'

Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0
Capabilities: cenum
Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line'
Item0: 'Front Mic'

This should work for everyone who is using Fedora 11.

What is a Terminal

The first thing you need to know in Linux is, what a "Terminal" is?
A terminal is a text entry and display device. It is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks. It is a device in which you can enter the command as text and you get an output. The ouptput may or may not be visible.
To get a terminal in Fedora, from the Main Menu bar select "Applications>System Tools>Terminal". You will get a window in which there will be a prompt. It looks like this -> $_
There is one more prompt which looks like this -> #_
The difference is the later one is for the super user and the first one is for the normal user. Super user has got few more privileges than a normal user.
Try to enter few commands and you will learn much about it in future.