Sprayfly

After setting up Pidgin IM to run on startup in Ubuntu, I was annoyed to discover that the buddy list would be displayed on the desktop each time the PC booted. I discovered that this could be resolved by enabling the Extended Preferences Plugin and configuring it to hide the buddy list on startup.

First, we need to install the Extended Preferences Plugin as this is not included with Pidgin.

sudo apt-get install pidgin-extprefs

Right Click on Pidgin Icon –> Plugins –> Check “Extended Preferences” –> Configure Plugin –> Check “Hide Buddy list at Startup”

After a reboot, I was surprised to see that the Buddy List had yet again appeared on my desktop despite the changes I had made to the settings. After searching around, it would seem that the problem is due to Pidgin loading faster than the system tray. This means that when it tries to minimize on startup, it is unable to find a system tray to minimize to and hence is forced to remain open. There is however a solution.

Open a terminal and do the following:
gedit ~/pidgin.sh

Now enter the following lines of code:
#!/bin/bash
sleep 30
pidgin

Now save changes and close Gedit.

Make the script executable:
chmod +x ~/pidgin.sh

Now go to System –> Preferences –> Sessions
Click on Add, under Name enter Pidgin, under Command enter ~/pidgin.sh

Now when you reboot, on the next startup Pidgin will be delayed for 30 seconds before it loads. This gives the system tray enough time to load and hence Pidgin should be able to launch minimized