How to recover Pidgin’s ICQ-functionality

Since today, AOL seems to reject all connections that use an old ICQ protocol, even their own ICQ 5.1 client and unfortunately also Pidgin. This is really wretched, because Linux users (and also Mac/Windows users who don’t want to use a slow, ressource-hungy client with a childish design that is also full of ads) are now locked out.

Fortunately there is a fix for this:
If you’re using Ubuntu, you just have to add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nicolai-spohrer/ubuntu hardy main
This can be done by using an editor like nano:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

After appending the line to your sources.list, you need to install the update by typing this into a terminal:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

After installing the fix, it’s recommended to remove the line you’ve added from your sources.list.

If you’re using Debian or ArchLinux, you can find fixed DEBs and TGZs at the Server of the University of Applied Sciences in Esslingen, Germany, all other Linux-Users find Patch-files for Pidgin and Licq there.
There’s also a patched DLL for Windows users, that need to put it into their Pidgin-directory.

Kopete users may try the patch at the KDE Bug Tracker.

Please note that these patches are NOT official and neither me nor the guys that made these fixes assume any responibility.

EDIT: Pidgin released Version 2.4.3, which fixed the Problem. You can get the Source from their homepage and compile it yourself, but I think it won’t take too long until your distribution will add it to its repositories.

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