Pidgin... Removing gaim safely?

[keef247]

Hi guys and girls,
Just wanting to install pidgin... problem is gaim is already installed and if i try to remove it i get:

Cannot remove 'gaim'

One or more applications depend on gaim. To remove gaim and the dependent applications, use the Synaptic package manager.

so what is the best plan of action so that I don't snuff up the rest of my apps that require it.
I don't want to be bug searching and pasting errors I want a clean way of removing it and installing Pidgin as thats supposed to be the new name for gaim right?
but either way I want it installed...

so how do I do it? I've made a deb from a rpm... just can't install because it says the latest version is installed which would be the preinstalled gaim with ubuntu...

cheers people...

[ikonia]

check the dependencies that gaim has against it and remove those programs (assuming you can) before removing gaim - then you can safley remove gaim. I would strongly advise against using a deb made from an rpm as an rpm is not meant for a debian based system so therefore the software it is built against will be from another distro and has potential to cause real issues and break you current distro - this should only be done by advanced users who really understand what they are doing, and even then its a pretty dubious move to make.

Please inform us how you are trying to remove gaim - if its too much hassle and removing gaim has the potential to break anything else (you'll see when you check the dependencies) just leave gaim on the system, its only a small application and doesn't have a big disk foot print.

[keef247]

after seeing a random link to getdeb.net i installed the 2 packages on there and pidgin runs without having to modify/uninstall gaim at all
all is good.
here's the links to the backported debs for fiesty 32/64bit versions if this will help anyone
http://www.getdeb.net/comment.php?rel_id=1045

check the dependencies that gaim has against it and remove those programs (assuming you can) before removing gaim - then you can safley remove gaim. I would strongly advise against using a deb made from an rpm as an rpm is not meant for a debian based system so therefore the software it is built against will be from another distro and has potential to cause real issues and break you current distro - this should only be done by advanced users who really understand what they are doing, and even then its a pretty dubious move to make.

Please inform us how you are trying to remove gaim - if its too much hassle and removing gaim has the potential to break anything else (you'll see when you check the dependencies) just leave gaim on the system, its only a small application and doesn't have a big disk foot print.

as it turns out mate it wasn't a problem in the end as I've described just then above this quote...
I was for the record using the add/remove option in the menu.but cheers anyway

[g8ina]

was expecting a recipe for pidgin pie ! oops