workswithu.com has written a great blog entry reconsidering the choice of making empathy the default IM client for GNOME in place of pidgin. Ubuntu Karmic Koala has been released recently and loyal followers of pidgin for the first time did not find their favorite IM client in the default install of their favorite Linux distribution.
The blog entry (as well as the comments in there) states the advantages and disadvantages of both- empathy being more integrated with GNOME but does not send out new email notification and pidgin- storing its password in plain text etc. The author then proceeds to ask whether it really matters as it would be easy to install the other left out software anyway.
I say, GNOME or Ubuntu should for once come with two IM clients- pidgin and empathy- while there is still a missing feature left out in empathy that is in pidgin. I know that this might be against their old philosophy of shipping with just one app that does a certain thing well- but they should somehow consider what their user wants.
As for me, new email notification specially in ym is a deal breaker (like the case with some comment posters in the blog entry also) but I would be testing empathy in the next release if they already have this. I think it is a simple feature to be added if only they will listen to their users. I am aware of pidgin’s plain text password issue but I am fine with not storing my password and therefore being asked for it everytime I start GNOME. So yes pidgin is still it for me.