Pidgin 2.7.6 fixes MSN connection issues

The Pidgin development team has issued version 2.7.6 of its open source instant messenger application. According to the developers, this maintenance release includes a variety of bug fixes and updates, including some that address an issue that prevented the IM client from connecting to Microsoft's MSN network.

Pidgin 2.7.6 features the addition of support for version 16 of the Microsoft Notification Protocol (MSNp16) with multiple login support, also known as "Multiple Points of Presence" (MPOP), and, as developer John Bailey notes, the project has also "started distributing a couple of new certificates needed to solve the latest MSN certificate disaster" that prevented users from connecting to the service. Other changes include fixes for AIM and ICQ, as well as XMPP and Windows-specific updates related to themes.

More details about the release can be found in the change log. Pidgin 2.7.6 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and RHEL based Linux distributions from the project's site. As Ubuntu ships with Pidgin, but does not typically update it after a release, it is necessary to refer to the Ubuntu specific install page on the Pidgin site to install 2.7.6 on Ubuntu.

The target release date for the next release, version 2.7.7, is the 19th of December. Pidgin is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

See also:

• Pidgin 2.7.6 released!, mailing list announcement.

(crve)