A Simple Facebook Addon to Empathy, NOT!

Wow, I am totally blown away by this task of getting the Facebook protocol to work on the instant messenger client, Empathy. I used to have it working on Pidgin, but lately it’s been a crapshoot. I went to IRC to get some help and low-and-behold, someone gave me a RTFM response. Just lovely, how helpful IRC. From the podcast world, I’ve heard that GNOME is shipping with Empathy as default instead of Pidgin. So; I thought I’d start using it… these desktop guys MUST know what they’re talking about.

Well; so far, I’m not impressed with Empathy at all! Pidgin looks a lot better and my SOUND actually works. Damn! I really wish SOUND wasn’t such an issue in Linux. We’re making heads spin with the amount of computing we can do, the available apps in x86_64 architecture, and the overall desktop stability… yet SOUND has ALWAYS been an issue since I started with Fedora 8.

Attempting to Install Facebook Plugin

So; I thought I’d really give it a go and install the Facebook plugin. I downloaded the same file that’s being used for Pidgin (at Google Code) and tried looking for an “Empathy” folder. After running a “locate” command, I noticed that Empathy really didn’t have a lib64 or some other home folder. It has a folder, but it’s only holding xml data nothing really concrete to the actual program. I saw some .so files but that wasn’t helpful to me. After researching some more, I realized that Empathy is really a client to Telepathy. Oh great, down that rabbit hole we go! So; I then did a “locate” for it and saw the same structure. “OK, this doesn’t make any sense to me! Where am I supposed to install this facebook plugin!?”

So; after some more research, I find myself at this really dated bug report. It’s basically saying I need to edit two files and put in the Facebook protocol. “Really!? Are we really in the early 2000s and I need to MANUALLY input protocols in Linux? Damn!” I did it anyway and after restarting Empathy, I got Network error. “OK, I’m done! I don’t need this kind of stress for a stupid IM protocol.”

So; in the end… I’m trying out ugly Empathy and we’ll see if it grows on me… Like a fungus! I posted something to an existing forum topic, let’s hope that gives me the salvation I’m looking for.

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