GYachE – Yahoo Webcam on Ubuntu Linux

So many people complained to me that they do not enjoy gaim because it does not supports Yahoo! web cam. Personally I don’t like web cams, but there are so many people out there who love to use Yahoo! messenger with web cam support. I wanted to assure people that they can chat with their Yahoo buddies and with Web Cams, this led me to search for an Instant messenger that supports Yahoo Web Cams and is available on Linux and I found GYachE.

It has all the features of Official Windows Yahoo Client and then some more. It is a little buggy at the moment. Like whenever someone invites me for voice chat I get disconnected from Yahoo servers. Popup menu that appears when someone right clicks disappears as soon as I remove my finger from the mouse button. So I need to hold it until I select an option from the menu. The extra information that it displays in a Chat window is really annoying specially when one is in a crowded chat room. Documentation on official site is empty and there no FAQs or Wiki. To get information about troubleshooting you will have to join their mailing list.

With all these minor issues, I still think that it is quite usable.

I downloaded the deb package for Ubuntu Dapper and installed it. Once logged in and joined a Yahoo! Chatroom, I instantly noticed the enhanced spam protection which is a blessing since usually there are quite many spam bots on all popular yahoo chatrooms spamming users with spam instant messages. I do not have a web cam so I decided to check the performance of Web Cam feature by viewing some one’s web cam. I don’t have any one on my Yahoo messenger buddy list with a web cam. So I had to request strangers to show me their web cam. This was difficult and I felt awkward but I needed to write this post so this was required. Some guy kindly showed me his webcam which worked quite well.

So I think now I can tell people that they can use Yahoo! web cam on Ubuntu. It is not as good as in Windows, but its there waiting to be polished.

Noumaan Yaqoob

I am a full-time WordPress blogger, I write tutorials about using WordPress, WordPress themes and plugins. Need help with your website? Feel free to contact me.

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