Kadu

An instant messager you didn’t know you needed. FREE | WWW.KADU.IM

This instant messenger (IM) is outstanding in many ways, and there’s a good chance it’s one of those overlooked applications you probably need, and not only because its rivals are weak. Kadu is a KDE-centric client for Gadu- Gadu, a popular Polish IM protocol, but you don’t need to be a member of the Gadu-Gadu network, as Kadu also supports Jabber/XMPP.

At the first look, Kadu is a typical IM client and while it’s very robust, it’s also remarkably comprehensive and featurerich. However, there are very few binary packages for Kadu, so you’ll probably need to build it from source and that’s the point where you’ll see how large its scope is. Kadu has numerous plugins and extras from MPD daemon integration (which lets your buddies know what you’re listening to right now) to an optional Ubuntu Unity indicator, word replacement module, images and videos integration for the chat window.

Kadu has a lot of dependencies and it takes some time to install them all before the usual $ cmake .. command finishes without errors. It takes 10–20 minutes more to compile the application itself ( $ make ) and extra effort to install it to a system-wide prefix (such as /usr). You’ll also need to rebuild your distro’s libqxmpp package in order to prevent Kadu from crashing when you add an XMPP account.

However, Kadu is stable and well-tested in other regards and in return for your efforts you get a perfectly versatile IM client with lots of bells, whistles and extras that cater for many tastes. Kadu’s interface is also very clean and polished and sports sensible placement of buttons, drop-down lists and categories.