HOWTO: Bulding the new Pidgin 2.7.8 on Trisquel.

Since Trisquel is based on Ludcid (correct me if I'm wrong here), I've found some GNOME components lagging behind. In particular, Empathy. I don't mind Empathy, it's just not my first choice of Instant Messenger.

This HOWTO will show you how to build the ever popular alternative, Pidgin, with minimal effort and time.

1) Download the Pidgin source (currently 2.7.8) from the SourceForge site:

http://www.pidgin.im/download/source/

It doesn't matter where you save the tar file, just remember where you saved it.

2) Now open a terminal, and navigate to /tmp:

$ cd /tmp

3) Unpack the Pidgin tar file here in /tmp:

$ tar -jxvf /location/of/where/you/downloaded/pidgin-2.7.8.tar.bz2 .

4) Now cd to the newly created pidgin directory:

$ cd /tmp/pidgin-2.7.8/

5) Download the build dependencies using apt-get:

$ sudo apt-get build-dep pidgin

6) As regular user, run the configure script:

$ ./configure

7) Using sudo, compile and install Pidgin:

$ sudo make install

8) Using sudo, run ldconfig so that the Pidgin binary is able to find libpurple.so:

$ sudo ldconfig -v

9) In the Trisquel start menu, under the Internet category, you should now see a new Pidgin icon represented by a white exclamation point inside a purple chat balloon.

10) Select the icon from the menu, and right-click, and add to either the desktop, the panel, or both!

Go ahead and start up Pidgin, and enter your Instant Messenger information! Now you have a nice alternative to Empathy! Happy chatting!

Let me know if you have trouble setting this up.

Cheers.