Pidgin (formerly
Gaim) is broken when you're running
NetworkManager (it's own pile of brokenness) and doing anything NetworkManager doesn't like. For instance, I've been
riding on the train for the last two hours
connected to the Internet via my mobile phone. In order for co-workers to be able to contact me while I'm out of the office, I launched pidgin which happily started and popped into the
Gnome panel displaying the
online symbol.
Two hours later, I went to check if someone was online and noticed my roster wasn't visible. Extending the window, I saw a faint-grey string of text on the status button that said that it was online:
"waiting for network connection". All this time it was indicating that it was online, I was sending and reading e-mail, but I wasn't connected to the instant messaging system. Checing the
Network options, I see nothing that indicates how to disable this braindead behaviour.