are there any good replacements?

I don't use any IM but a good link to find some:

http://download.cnet...itorsRating+asc

Trillian

http://www.trillian.im/learn/tour-interop.html

I use empathy to communicate with Google and yahoo clients and find it OK.

In my opinion Pidgin is not nearly as good, and I too would be interested in what alternatives others have tried

edit

I have just seen this site, but needles to say have not tried any of the suggestions yet.

Only a few of them seem to support Linux

AMSN is a linux version of messenger and should be in your distro repo. It will log into hotmail etc. just like messenger

i've used pidgin for years without any complaints. connects to multiple chat servers: aim, msn, yahoo, google, etc...

k

Trillian

http://www.trillian.im/learn/tour-interop.html

but not for linux

Trillian http://www.trillian....ur-interop.html

but not for linux

Applications > Ubuntu Software Center and look for aMSN or Emesene: they're both MSN client, personally I prefer Emesene but different strokes for different folks.

Enjoy your Linux

as said above Trillian and Amsn work well on all distro's

I use Pigeon too. The only thing is that it does not support webcam function. Other than that I find is work fine.

Have you tried Emesene ? I heard its good but never used it. A review of the latest version click

I really recommend Pidgin too. It was the standard IM for ubuntu 1 year ago. ( Dont understand why they change it to Empathy)

By the way there is a nice Ubuntu Package called "pidgin-otr", withit you can chat encrypted with all pidgin supported chat protocols. 

Kopete has multi chat outfit, and it support webcam, it is bundled with KDE, but works on other desk tops like Gnome etc

There are few more , but I don't remember their name off hand .

Emesene is probably the most reliable linux MSN app ive used

"Empathy isn't good" in what respect? As a basic chat client - for text only messages - it does the job very well. Also, it's not cluttered with all the crap that Microsoft and others like to put into a client. File transfers would be useful, but hardly essential, and webcam support would be nice too. As others have said, you could try aMSN. If you are not limited to the MSN network, you could use Skype for Linux.