5 Linux Identi.ca Clients – Screw Twitter
At the moment there is a lot of talk on the Internet about the micro-blogging site Twitter, but I see less love for its open source counterpart, Identi.ca.
The laconi.ca micro-blogging platform, created by Evan Prodromou, is free as in freedom. There is the “original” laconi.ca installation on identi.ca, but you can also download laconi.ca, install it on your own server and your users can talk with every site where a laconi.ca install is present.
Due to Twitters immense popularity, there are far more desktop clients available for it than for identi.ca, especially for Linux. However, this time Linux has it all covered, from simple methods to “ident” your message (still looking for an equivalent to “tweet”) to full-fledged desktop clients, which bring all the functionality of the website to the desktop.
To be more correct, these article features software you can run in GNU/Linux that supports identi.ca. Gwibber and Twhirl also support Twitter and a multitude of other sites/protocols/whatever.
Probably one you would first want to go for. Built in GTK using Python, Gwibber certainly has the “shiny” factor. It is very popular amongst Linux users because it’s easy to use, open source and built using open source and aside from the main website available for download directly from most distributions’ repositories. Gwibber sports two curious features: you can apply a separate banner color for each service and support for RSS feeds (which I find very useful).
Arch Linux users may encounter problems installing the pywebkitgtk-svn dependency from the Arch Users’ Repository.
UPDATE: a working howto for Arch is available here. Many thanks to the author.
Twihrl is the client I use at the moment. So yeah, this is an Adobe AIR application and I personally find it quite good. Still, the lack of interest from Adobe’s side is sadly very apparent. Installing AIR is not difficult, your distribution should enable you to easily obtain it from a repository. After you have got Air installed you download the Twhirl binary from the project’s website and run it using “adobe-air /path/to/file.air”
Problems:
- at the moment there is no comfortable way of updating Adobe AIR, which is quite a pain, especially when I see those OS X users with their smug smiles when they use the AIR auto-update.
- I can’t figure out how to make a command out of it, but I saw it somewhere. I’m too lazy anyway, just made a quick-launch icon with the command in the gnome toolbar
- Twhirl will want access to the default keyring for your stored identi.ca password, which is a weird bug GNOME has to fix. And no, don’t erase the keyring file, it will screw GNOME up.
- I hate them for not showing the Linux logo on their site alongside Mac OS X’ apple and the Windows “flag”
- You will need a compositing manager or else the app will have ugly black borders. You can use xcompmgr if you don’t want to hog your system.
Using the terminal is sometimes much faster. So why not use it to communicate with your identi.ca friends? Linc from TLLTS, a good Linux podcast, made a little script which can act as a sort of a client for identi.ca.
You have all the basic functions, posting and reading new stuff. The client has also been covered by the LV podcast, where we discussed marshall’s mod, which improves upon Linc’s code.
Here is Marshall’s post on the Linux Outlaws forums which will double as a good guide to setting up and using identibash. Don’t be afraid, it’s really simple and takes less than 5 minutes.
Posting only:
Since Gnome 2.24, the Search field in the Deskbar applet enables you to post your ramblings to identi.ca.
Gnome Do identi.ca plugin
Install the Gnome Do plugins pack and enable the identi.ca plugin in the Settings. Then invoke Do, type what you want to send and Do will suggest you post it to identi.ca!
Well, that will do for today!
Do you know any other identi.ca clients for Linux?
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If it’s free as in freedom, why can’t I delete my account or export my posts?
Free as in freedom should start from the beginning, not hope to add those features further down the line 
@edythemighty: Have you already contacted the team about this? I don’t think they desperately need that data, tehy just need someone to code the feature into laconi.ca
It’s already on the roadmap. I’m just saying, it should’ve been there from the start
‘Choqok’ and it really rocks!
http://choqok.gnufolks.org/
Cool overview Gregor. I personally use Gwibber.
Very nice howto for Arch Linux users, who want to use gwibber. http://www.mycybersupport.com/blog/archives/6
@Boinside:
yes I just tried this howto and it works well. Updated the post.
found your site on digg and must say that i am pretty surprised. your site has a lot of potential keep it up. my domain is in my email let me know what you think.
[...] 5 Linux Identi.ca Clients – Screw Twitter At the moment there is a lot of talk on the Internet about the micro-blogging site Twitter, but I see less love for its open source counterpart, Identi.ca. [...]
[...] 5 Linux Identi.ca Clients – Screw Twitter At the moment there is a lot of talk on the Internet about the micro-blogging site Twitter, but I see less love for its open source counterpart, Identi.ca. [...]
[...] 5 Linux Identi.ca Clients – Screw Twitter At the moment there is a lot of talk on the Internet about the micro-blogging site Twitter, but I see less love for its open source counterpart, Identi.ca. [...]
[...] Here’s where I found it: http://www.internetling.com/2009/03/2…; [...]
You’ve forgotten twidge. is for the shell,too.
http://software.complete.org/software/projects/show/twidge
Greetz
[...] Here’s where I found it: http://www.internetling.com/2009/03/2…; [...]
Does anybody know how google plans to make money from the twitter deal
Hey, if you get a chance please check out IdentiFox, a port of TwitterFox. You can download the addon here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10941. We need reviews to get it listed for public consumption on addons.mozilla.org.
yeah, I’ve been hoping for more Identi.ca support… glad to find this article… gwibber is great, & gnome-do is awesome – especially when limiting distraction is a must…
oh, Identitwitch (http://richfish.org/identitwitch/) seems to have promise as well, but did seem slightly buggy – kept freezing-up on me…
[...] tentando, em vão, compilar o famoso Gwibber no meu Debian), descobri o genial choqoK, no comentário de um artigo sobre clientes GNU/Linux para o identi.ca (viram crianças? leiam sempre os [...]
[...] 5 Linux Identi.ca Clients – Screw Twitter : Comme son nom l’indique. L’ascension actuelle de Twitter est impressionnante. Et c’est heureux qu’on ait une solution libre avec Identi.ca. [...]
[...] ورØمته وبركاته ومغÙرته ورضوانه * Jruby – Quick and Dirty * Five Linux Identi.ca Clients – Screw Twitter * Ten Reasons why PHP is Still Better than Ruby * سلسلة دروس لكتابة لعبة [...]
Count in the new identi.ca/twitter client from Greg KH, to post your bash work
BTI: BASH Twitter Identi.ca
http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/bti.html
Cool overview Gregor. I personally use Gwibber.
cool article, twitter will be commercialised very soon I think.
you should think about switching from wordpress to typepad
Very interesting to read here. Thanks