Pidgin Portable 2.5.5 Released

John T. Haller's picture
Submitted by John T. Haller on March 6, 2009 - 2:53pm

Pidgin logoPidgin Portable 2.5.5 has been released. Pidgin Portable is a versatile instant messaging client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your IM settings and buddy lists with you. It has all the same great features as Pidgin, including support for AOL, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and Jabber networks, but there's nothing to install on the local PC. This new release updates Pidgin to the current 2.5.5 release and has a new multilingual installer. It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Suite. And it's open source and completely free.

Read on for more details...

Features

Pigdin Portable ScreenshotPidgin Portable is a multi-protocol instant messaging client that works with AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! and more. You can log into multiple networks all with the same program. All your IM settings and buddy lists are self-contained, so it leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on. Learn more about Pidgin...

Pidgin Portable supports the two most popular encryption plugins for Pidgin. Both are packaged as portable installers that automatically work with Pidgin Portable. You can install Pidgin-Encryption 3.0 and/or Pidgin-OTR 3.2 and communicate securely with other users.

New In This Release

This new release updates Pidgin to 2.5.5, fixing some bugs (change log), and a new multilingual installer has been added.

PortableApps.com Installer / PortableApps.com Format

Pidgin Portable is packaged in a PortableApps.com Installer so it will automatically detect an existing PortableApps.com installation when your drive is plugged in. It supports upgrades by installing right over an existing copy, preserving all settings. And it's in PortableApps.com Format, so it automatically works with the PortableApps.com Suite including the Menu and Backup Utility.

Download

Pidgin Portable is available for immediate download from the Pidgin Portable homepage. Get it today!

Story Topic:

Comments

Hi!

I have separated as far as possible the applications from the data. Therefor i have a different directory structure as maybe some of you have. Anyway, in most of the portable launchers there is a setting for the data directory. I use this setting to separate data and application.

The portable launcher for Pidgin is not able to change the directory for the users data. It is not possible to configure the path vie the .ini file!! Launcher does not support it! Sad

I modified the launcher for me locally. But it would be nice to get this changes also into the version available here. Smile

See also post https://portableapps.com/node/17617

Thanks, bye
Gerhard

180 Apps on my USB Flash Drive and counting ...

John T. Haller's picture

Many of our launchers are deprecating this functionality for a number of reasons. Your data is contained in a separate Data directory in all apps and easily backed up by the PortableApps.com Backup utility either together with the apps or just the app data to save time and space. This also still allows you to easily move your app and its data from one drive to another. This is the officially supported way moving forward. If you wish to discuss other options further, please make a post in the support forums.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

It should be noted that Pidgin was not designed to be run on a flash drive. The developers decided that since IM was an insecure protocol, they would not bother encrypting your stored passwords for all of your accounts.

This may not be a big deal on your own PC as you could implement file permissions to stop others from reading the password file. However, on a FAT32 drive this is not possible.

Let anyone who uses PidginPortable know, that if they choose to have Pidgin save their passwords, anyone who finds your USB drive can simply open up the "accounts.xml" file and have instant access to your passwords.

Because of this huge security flaw in PidginPortable I would recommend do one of the following:

1. Don't let Pidgin store your password
2. Buy an encrypted flash drive
3. Find a portable IM client that does not have this flaw.

Other than that, if you were to loose your flash drive, someone could have instant access to all of your email accounts.