GyachI in action. Ultimate Linux Yahoo Client
Kopete 1.1.3 (KDE 4.7.1 Ubuntu 11.10)There are many Internet Messengers, but the biggest one, especially in Asia, is Yahoo Messenger. This is a great IM with so many beautiful stuffs like Webcam, Photo Sharing, Audio, Environments, Cute Emoticons etc. But, probably, the most favorite feature of YM for user is Webcam.
In windows, there is an official Yahoo Messenger application developed by Yahoo! Inc. itself. This app is so damn gorgeous with its eyecandy purple color, shiny, cute but elegant. As my personal opinion, I love this app : Yahoo Messenger for Windows.
How about Linux users? There are some IM Clients in Linux that support Yahoo protocol, but not all support Webcam feature. Pidgin, the (probably) most popular multi-protocol messenger client in Linux, until now, doesn't support webcam yet. So does Empathy. IM clients in Linux that support webcam is just two existed for now : GyachI and Kopete. Lets we dig deeper into these apps.
1. GyachI (GyachE Improved)
Review
Several years ago, there is an Yahoo Messenger Client in Linux desktop called Gyach. This was a great app with full support of YM features, included Webcam. But, just like so many another projects in Linux world, the Gyach developer has lost its motivation and mood to develop Gyach and stuck just in version 0.9.8.
Goodly, there are some developers that then forked Gyach into more uptodated and actively maintained and renamed as GyachI (Gyach Improved). This app is a great improvement of Gyach that built under gtk2. The last GyachI version (when I wrote this post) is 1.2.11. Here are the GyachI features :
Webcam
Voice
Tuxvironments (Tux version of Yahoo environments)
Full Emoticons support.
And so so so many nice features and tuning we could explore :D
Installation
The steps to install GyachI in our Ubuntu could be seen here (it works not only in Ubuntu 11.04 but also works in newer Ubuntu releases).
Bad News
GyachI is ultimate, but sadly, this app seems to be no longer actively maintained :'( The version 1.2.11 is the last but we Ubuntu users still could install it by PPA and could be installed in any newer Ubuntu version (11.10, 12.04).
I pray there are some users that have programming skill will be morally called to maintain this app into newer Linux platform, or maybe fork it into another name with another newer synchronization to newer Linux toolkits (gtk3, qt4, etc etc).
2. Kopete
Review
Kopete is a KDE app, so this multiprotocols IM client is a part of KDE SC releases. This app, greatly, support Yahoo Webcam but with some minuses. Because of a part of KDE SC, this app is always be modern and uptodated. Looks pretty and shiny like other KDE apps, but also, like other KDE apps too, this app is heavier to load than gtk apps because of its dependency with KDE runtime (this is OK, right?).
Though not fully rich just like GyachI has, Kopete is the only exists IM that support Yahoo webcam. This is the only alternative if GyachI in the end must be Rest-In-Peace (Oh God, I hope no).
Installation
This app is officially supported by Ubuntu repo. We can easily install it by apt :
sudo apt-get install kopete
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