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People have given me loads of 'gyan' on how to configure Gaim, Kopete and the like. Let me tell you friends, I have spent the better half of a year trying to configure them, I have tried the so-called normal easy settings. They do not work. I can not comment on people who claim to have got them working from behind a SQUID proxy, but in my case they do not work. The proxy blocks ports such as 5050 and 5222, which are directly used by Google Talk and Yahoo!, and since our sysadmin left its not possible to get them opened. At this point let me point out that my purpose was to make a post to help out others, and not seek help for myself. If you find it unacceptable, then very well, but do not spoil the fresh air. As one of the members have pointed out, I can do some hacking on Gaim by downloading its source code, etc.. I am already on my way my dear friend! And by the way I had tried contacting Google long time back but to no avail. I definitely find your patronosing attitude exteremely disgusting. But do you realise that there are scores of people who do not give a damn about hacking Gaim, who would love to use GNU/Linux if only they had an easy way to solve some of their problems.

Look. If those proxy settings dont work on Linux then nothing probably will.... If they dont work then you need to use ethereal / tcpdump to understand what the heck is going on. Tough luck.

Thats not the point my dear. I have already figured out the issue. I think I clearly mentioned it earlier. Moreover someone took the pain of pointing out how his CVS

If windows clients use HTTP proxy to get their messages through Squid then Linux clients should as well.

Thats exactly what I want to say. But its not feasible to hack through every problem that I encounter in GNU/Linux. I already spent a lot of time to find out a way to get my touchpad working flawlessly in Fedora Core 2.

I agree with Kenneth's view that Linux is for everyone and not for the 'elite'. I do not know how you are going to meet the FSF India's goal of spreading Free Software to the masses (especially in rural areas), if you think otherwise. I would love to hear Dr. Nagarjuna's views on this.

To strengthen my point regarding what Mark Shuttleworth was talking about that day, I can site the example of how Ubuntu has decided not to include the developer tools in their desktop seed. Doubting Thomases are invited to view the debate on this at the Ubuntu FAQ. The need to take GNU/Linux to the masses has been clearly and repeatedly stated.

I love hacking, maybe more than what some people on this list do. But I do _not_ have the time to hack around every odd problem I encounter. Just switching over to Windoze would have a much simpler solution for many people in my position.

However now that this whole discussion is becoming more an more of a flame war, I would want to desist from participating in it. The sole intention of my initial post was to help out people who have been encountering the same problem as myself, and not to beg for needless advice from so-called 'gyaani' people.