Over the years I’ve created several email accounts and shared them with some friends and family to be in touch through Instant Messengers (IM). Being online for each account meant I had to open 4 different programs, each for one specific IM (AOL, MSN, Google Talk, Y!IM).

That was before all before I found Trillian, a proprietary program. It has a free version, I’ll give credit to that but the application was starting to slow down my computer a lot. That is when I switched to the open source Pidgin, formerly known as Gaim.

Pidgin is fast, simple to use, and cross-platform so I can use it on Linux or Windows computers. With it I’m constantly logged on to my 5 IM accounts. It hasn’t crashed on me once. Another nice thing about Pidgin is you can add plugins to increase its potential even further (encryption, message notification, new email notification, etc etc etc.). The list of plugins is pretty big but my favorite and most essentials are Guifications and Extended Preferances.

The only negative side of Pidgin is that you can not chat with voice or video, you can only use text. Making it clear, this isn’t Pidgin’s fault, the ones to blame are  the other proprietary messengers that have closed programming codes.

Many Linux distros already have it installed, for more info and download please visit their website. You can also add it to a USB pen drive with Portable Apps with to carry your messenger with you.