I'm happy to report that for the first time in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) SILC support in Pidgin will work without needing to recompile Pidgin. It's unfortunate that the process took so very long but at least it's finally done. I have tested the packages which have been backported to Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and the SILC support seems to work well. I would certainly recommend people needing SILC support who are using Ubuntu 8.04 to try the backported packages instead of recompiling (though the recompiling task is a good learning experience).

I’ve always chosen Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging over Pidgin-Encryption. I appreciate that OTR is compatible with multiple IM clients, not just Pidgin, and offers perfect forward secrecy. Both products are packaged in Debian and Ubuntu as pidgin-otr and pidgin-encryption and once installed will show up in Pidgin’s plugin list.

Despite my best efforts there is still no graphical SILC client in Ubuntu. I feel I’ve commented on my frustration and disappointment with this fact enough in the past. So, here’s how to get SILC working through Pidgin in Ubuntu 8.04.