My brief experience with Kopete has warranted me enough motivation to register on this forum and tell you guys how much it has annoyed me. Now, I don't mean any malice, but after what just happened and the complexity that did nothing but make it worse has thoroughly **** me off. Let me explain,

About a few days ago, I booted Fedora Core up in Ubuntu's Virtualbox. I messed around with it, figured I liked the way Fedora looked and worked, and made the decision that when I had some cd-rws handy, I would make the switch. A particular program caught my eye, and that was Kopete. From the screenshots, it looked good compared to the bland Pidgin I had been using. So, I opened the program.

Immediately, I was bombarded with several windows asking me to set up something that stored my passwords. No, I don't want to do that, they won't be stored anyway.. Virtualbox and all. So, I clicked cancel. The same window reappeared. I cancelled. A new window asking me to store in unsafe appeared. I clicked cancel. I set up my account and it logged on. I liked the way Kopete looked and felt. The way messages tabbed below names in an organized and clean manner appealed to me. Maybe I would use Kopete now.

This morning, I installed Kopete on Ubuntu. I loaded the program and went through the same bombardments of windows asking me to store my password and information. I even selected 'do not show this window again' but once I got my account set up, it just reappeared. Then, it bombarded me with alerts "You can not add yourself to Kopete!" or something to that effect. I could add myself on pidgin, and did so to see how my status messages worked. That sucks.

So, I must have searched for hours (overexg) looking for the accounts menu. Everything is buried in illogical spots, and you only find it after you crawl every window and menu and what have you. I noticed there was no support for IRC, as there was in Pidgin, so I decided .. maybe I won't be using Kopete. So, I messed around some more. Tested out some ims, moved some buddies I had disorganized on my buddy list. Then, I decided.. Nah.. Kopete isn't for me. I'll consider it some other time. I closed Kopete out, via window and via top tray.

Now, here's the part that has **** me off. I load Pidgin, my screen name begins to connect. Boom, it connects, but all of my buddies are gone. My buddy list is absolutely emptied. Fortunately, I only had a few buddies on there, and one or two of them I only knew by alias, so unless they instant message me in the future, I won't remember their names (They used a sequence of numbers, not an easy to remember name.) So, thanks a lot Kopete for erasing my buddy list. It's only obvious it was Kopete, because what else could have done this?

So, Kopete is terrible. It erased my buddy list, it kept bombarding me with prompts asking me to store my information even when I told it not to, it has no support for IRC, there was apparently no way to switch between accounts, and the options are illogically placed, unintuitive in their nature, and a real pain to work with. All that would have been soothed over as I learned to use Kopete, but the fact that my buddy list was erased has **** me off greatly.

Terrible. I would advise others to avoid this software, as there's a chance it will just wipe your buddy list from the AOL servers, leaving you buddylist-less on any AIM client. As for software, I'm sure once you get around the complexities, illogical toolbars, and spam-fest of 'Save your password with the KDE wallet!' windows, Kopete might be a nice messenger. Until then, good luck, and thanks a lot for erasing my buddy list, again.

Moved to Discussions & Opinions.

Most "buddy lists" are stored on the server of the system you are using. Every time I've upgraded KDE and Kopete, i.e., done a clean install, my list of contacts has always returned, from the servers, once I've added the account to Kopete. That goes for Yahoo, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and Hotmail (msn).
Kopete has it quirks and an occasional problem, but, overall, it is the best chat software I've used to date.
If I were using winblows I would install KDE for winblows just so I could use Kopete.

Hi,

I think youre problem is a misunderstanding of the KDE environment within which Kopete runs. KDE has a unified "wallet" system rather than the Windows system of each application storing passwords seperately you create a wallet in the KDE environment for all KDE apps tostore your passwords in one managable location/application and this is encrypted. Most applications need to store passwords - even just temporarily.

When the first application you use within the KDE environment needs to store a password the wallet application asks you for wallet details for storing the passwords.

I agree Kopete probably should provide the option to enable you to use these credentials for just one session but this isn't a typical usage/use-case as most people will only want to setup the account once and then either have it login automatically each time, have selected startup of the application or be able to select which identities/profiles/im-accounts login when the application starts.

Just give Kopete another try and let it store your passwords.

Account settings are in Settings->configure->accounts - sure a different place to Pidgin; but an equally logical place to locate the page.

Hope that helps

R