The popular Linux instant messaging program GAIM has changed its name to Pidgin with the introduction of version 2.0. I had been looking for a Pidgin .deb package for Ubuntu Dapper and couldn't find one. So instead of waiting around for one to appear I built one today from source. I have installed it and it seems to be working fine and it has 'adopted' the settings and accounts from the previous GAIM installation.
I would like to share this package with anyone who might need it. But first let me warn you that I am not an expert at building packages. I do not know what dependencies are required by Pidgin but I would suppose they would be the same as for the GAIM 2.0 betas. This package will not tell apt-get to resolve dependencies so I strongly suggest you install the GAIM 2.0 beta packages and handle the dependencies that way.
Use this package at your own risk!
Pidgin 2.0.1-1 for Ubuntu Dapper [Link 1]
Pidgin 2.0.1-1 for Ubuntu Dapper [Link 2]
P.S. Please let me know if there are any problems with the download links.
[EDIT] Installing the following packages should resolve any problems with dependencies. Copy and paste this command in a Terminal window... and run it, of course.
sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev libxml2-dev gettext libnss-dev libnspr-dev libgtkspell-dev
