Installing Gaim for Qtopia is a pretty easy task, but it has a few steps initially. For a less verbose list of what's needed, see requirements below.

Step 1.

Before you start, add the following feed to your package manager:

http://qpe-gaim.sourceforge.net/feed/release

Step 2.

Next, you must install libglib2.0, either from our feed or from your distribution's feed (such as OpenZaurus testing/unstable).

Step 3.

After that, you need the glibc unicode conversion modules, provided either in our gconv-tiny package in our feed, or the more complete gconv-modules package provided by the OpenZaurus feed. Note that without one of these packages, you will not be able to receive messages in OSCAR (AIM/ICQ), and possibly other protocols. This is important!

Step 4.

If you plan to install MSN or Jabber (libgaim-protocols, or libgaim-protocol-msn and/or libgaim-protocol-jabber), you need to install the SSL support. For this, you need libgaim-ssl, libgnutls7, libgcrypt, and zlib.

Step 5.

The next step is to download libgaim and either libgaim-protocols or one of the libgaim-protocol-* packages. libgaim-protocols provides AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, and Napster chat.

If you only plan to use a few protocols, and you wish to save space, you may want one of the libgaim-protocol-* packages, such as libgaim-protocol-oscar (for AIM/ICQ) or libgaim-protocol-jabber (for Jabber).

Step 6.

Once you have the previous packages installed, simply install qpe-gaim.

Once installed, you may choose to either create your accounts from the account editor, or import your settings from Gaim on your PC. To do this, create a directory named .gaim in your home directory (typically /root), or put it on a CF or SD card and create a symlink to it. As gaim downloads buddy icons automatically, and this can't be turned off for the time being, the latter option is preferred.

To import the accounts, copy the *.xml files from the .gaim directory in your home directory on your PC to that directory on your PDA. Note: You must have Gaim 0.65 or higher on the PC to do this.

Below are a list of the packages you must have to use qpe-gaim.

gconv-tiny or gconv-modules
libglib-2.0 or libglib-2.0-0
libgaim
libgaim-protocols or libgaim-protocol-*
qpe-gaim

Below are a list of packages you must have for SSL support (required by MSN and Jabber).

zlib libgcrypt libgnutls7 gaim-ssl