Gaim fun.

So, gaim has started crashing several times an hour recently. It just decided to happen and it hasn’t stopped since. I’ve used it continuously for years, it’s crashed something like 2 times during all these years, and nowadays, it crashes 4-5 times/hour.

I keep thinking it must have something to do with my new AMD64 system, as a lot of other apps (e.g. Liferea) work flawlessly on a 32-bit machine, and barely start before they fall off their sticks on my AMD64 system. Oddly though, I’ve been using gaim since I got the machine back in June, and it’s only been acting up the last week or two.

What’s even more odd is that I upgraded temporarily to gaim 2 (the beta) and the problem remained. I’m now running on the SVN version of gaim 2, and hopefully things will be better now. I’m even considering finding alternatives, but I doubt anything out there beats gaim. :/

Update: *crash*

Renamed .gaim to .gay (I know, elementary school humor at its best) and re-entered all my account info. Running without all plugins, including OTR, so government nazi assholes of the world, here’s your chance to hear me speak really, really bad Japanese. A chance you mustn’t miss.

Update: *crash*

Testily compiled and started using gaim on the 32-bit environment instead. Man, it looks like shit, but if it stops crashing, who cares.

Update: *crash* (though I gotta give it to them, this time it stayed alive for over a day — trying again)

A few weeks later, I see this:

“Yesterday, Gaim started crashing for a bunch of people (most notably Windows users) when trying to connect a MSN account. This is due to a bug in Gaim which has been fixed in subversion (don’t use subversion), and we’re working on releasing a fix. We’ll keep you updated. In the meantime, feel free to commiserate with your fellow MSN-using Wingaim users. ” (from gaim.sf.net)
I am not a notable Windows user, admittedly, but it didn’t say exclusively — it said notably. Here’s to hoping…

A few months later, the gaim people claim to have fixed it. I am thrilled to hear that, and might actually give 64-bit a shot again. Gaim was the major reason why I gave up on it. Go Gaim peeps!