Noticed problems with your pidgin, trying to log into your ICQ account?
Unfortunately there are some vast changes in the ICQ protocol and pidgin versions less than 2.5.5 don’t support that any more.
Who thinks, no problem, I run an update, will see that the repositories have no packages for him and it depends of the distribution how fast they will be available.
Pidgin itself tells you to go to the official homepage and download the new version, but if you run linux, you’ll only find the source. Okay, three options:
- Wait for the official package
Maybe the smartest of all options. Official packages are 100% supported and you normally can trust them. A big con is the delay time since the release of the new version and the availability of the package.
- Compile the source
No problem, if you have all developer libraries and a compiler ready, but if not, it can be a hard and ugly way…
- Use unofficial packages
Fortunately there are some sources (getdeb.net) where you can get new version packages. They are not officially supported, but in the case of pidgin, I only can say, that I noticed no problems at all.
Maybe it’s not the clean and best way, but it’s a fast way and you can install the official packages later, when they are available.
For some users it could be confusing to remove and install everything in right order, so I thought to write some tiny bash script to help them with that. The script will remove, download and install everything for you.
Simpy copy and paste it in an editor and run it as root in a shell or download the script here.
#!/bin/sh
# Check that user is root
if [ "$(id -u)" != "0" ]; then
echo "This script must be run as root (run with sudo in ubuntu)!" 1>&2
exit(1)
fi
# Remove old installations
sudo apt-get --force-yes remove pidgin libpurple0 libpurple-bin pidgin-data
# Make us a place for the files
mkdir tmp
cd tmp
# Get the files
#pidgin
if [ ! -e pidgin_*.deb ]
then
wget http://www.getdeb.net/download/3960/0
fi
#libpurple0
if [ ! -e libpurple0*.deb ]
then
wget http://www.getdeb.net/download/3960/1
fi
#libpurple-bin
if [ ! -e libpurple-bin*.deb ]
then
wget http://www.getdeb.net/download/3960/2
fi
# pidgin data
if [ ! -e pidgin-data*.deb ]
then
wget http://www.getdeb.net/download/3960/3
fi
# Install the packages
dpkg -i pidgin-data*.deb
dpkg -i libpurple0*.deb
dpkg -i libpurple-bin*.deb
dpkg -i pidgin_*.deb
# Go back and clean up
cd ..
rm -rf tmp
echo "End..."