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).

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.

Today (April 22, 2008) SILC Server 1.1.6 was released following 3 other releases since April 12, 2008. I’m glad to see the attention the software is getting though it seems unlikely that these fixes will be in Debian or Ubuntu anytime soon. Debian Sid is keeping pace but the updates have not yet made it into Debian Lenny. And it seems likely that Ubuntu 8.04 will ship with version 1.1.1 (hopefully with some additional security patches). Unfortunately neither the ChangeLog nor the Release Notes for these recent releases is accessible on the website.

• SILC Server

It’s not recent but SILC server 1.1 was released about 2 months ago. Unfortunately it still doesn’t fix what I see as the biggest issue: that the server cannot be run on a private IP behind NAT. This feature is in the SILC TODO file for features for 1.2 and later. The question is will it arrive sooner than IPv6 adoption that alleviates much of the need for NAT.