Empathy 2.30 Released with Improved Facebook and IRC Support

by Joe Brockmeier - Mar. 30, 2010Comments (0)

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The Empathy instant messaging client has received a major update. The 2.30 version was officially released on Monday, and includes a number of improvements and enhancements including easier setup for Facebook chat.

Empathy is a multi-protocol instant messaging client and is the default IM client for GNOME. It works with text chats, voice and video chats. It supports Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo, GroupWise, XMPP (Jabber), and AIM, among others. If you want to spice up Empathy's interface, you can use one of the themes and even use Adium themes that are built with WebKitGtk support.

Facebook support in Empathy is really just support for Jabber (XMPP), but setting up a client for Facebook's XMPP setup can be a bit complex. In 2.30 this is greatly simplified for Empathy users with a Facebook setup widget in the account dialog, so users need only know their name and password.

The 2.30 release improves the account dialog altogether so users can manage status across all accounts easily, and can manage accounts from the GNOME Preferences menu. This release also improves Empathy's IRC support, and lets users join IRC channels that are password-protected.

The source code is immediately available, and packages are ready for openSUSE 11.2 and openSUSE Factory in the GNOME Factory repository. Packages for 2.30 are also available for users running Ubuntu Lucid betas in the Personal Package Archive (PPA) for Empathy.