Turpial: Twitter Client For Linux

A shot of the login window for Turpial

Firing up Turpial

If you’re a Linux desktop user like myself you may have experienced problems finding for a decent Twitter client. In many distributions the default client is Gwibber, it’s even integrated into the Unity desktop for Ubuntu. I’ve used it on and off for years now and I’m not one to throw harsh criticism around if I can help it. However, in the case of Gwibber I think it’s well deserved. It’s monumentally slow, buggy and unstable. Even after all these years. I have no idea how it’s become so popular. Whenever I try Gwibber it hangs and I get the classic Compiz grey window while I wait for the machine to stop having a panic attack. Often all I’m trying to do is refresh my messages. You may think this is due to my machine being old or slow. Not so my friends. I last used Gwibber in Ubuntu 12.10 on an Intel Core i7 3.5ghz quad core machine with 8 gig of RAM and an SSD. Hardly a low spec PC I’m sure you’ll agree. Well capable of running a Twitter client, I’m not asking it for the meaning of life here. Being an app that relies on loading messages from the Twitter (and in my case Identica) you could easily assume it must be the API causing the slowness. Perhaps even network lag. My guess would just be poor design and coding. An application that locks up so badly and frequently that it affects the performance of your whole desktop is totally unacceptable. I persevered with Gwibber for a long time for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I hoped i would improve and performance would be refined. Secondly because none of the alternatives I tried were much better, if they were any better at all that is.

A dialogue box for a new message. Large main text box and a submit button

Sending a message with Turpial

At this point I should give Choqok an honourable mention. It’s a KDE microblogging client which I’ve used intermittently over the last 2 years. It is much better than Gwibber in performance but as I don’t use KDE on any of my machines it requires the QT libraries to run. All that is installed for you with the main package and it’s not a major hassle, but it does add extra overhead. I found the layout and UI a little confusing at first but gradually got used to it. Not exactly a lightweight client but considerably more so than Gwibber. Worth a look if you’re on KDE but not the application I want to tell you about today.

The status quo (not the band thankfully) with microblogging clients on Linux continued for quite some time. The lack of a decent native Twitter client was getting embarrassing. Then I discovered a wonderful little app called Turpial completely by accident. I was fed up with Gwibber locking up for the 15 millionth time one day so began searching online for ways to make it faster or fix it. I came across a forum post responding to a similar question containing the words, “the solution to Gwibber’s performance problems is installing Turpial and moving on”. I can’t credit this statement to the right person as I should because I lost link and it was all quite a blur. So whoever that mystery poster was, thank you! I searched my package manager for “turpial” and sure enough found the application nice and quickly. Once I got it installed I was amazed by the speed and usefulness of this client. That was a couple of months ago and I haven’t used anything else since. I’m not looking back.

The main thing I like about Turpial is the speed, it really is a lightweight app and runs very smoothly. Especially when you consider that it’s all written in Python, a language often wrongly accused of being slow. If you switch to wide mode in the preferences you can add columns and use it like Tweetdeck, the ever popular Twitter client. See the image below.

A Turpial window with 3 columns placed horizontally

Turpial in wide mode

You can fine tune the refresh settings for replies, direct messages and your main Twitter stream individually in the preferences. Also note the “wide mode” check box if you want multiple columns.

The preferences window in Turpial. 3 sliders to set update frequency, some assorted tick boxes below.

The Preferences dialogue

Apart from the speed perhaps my favourite thing about Turpial is that it comes under GNU GPL version 3 or later license. My personal favourite as a copyleft proponent.

The license statement for Turpial, asserting the GPLv3 license.

Turpial uses GPLv3

There’s only one drawback to Turpial that I can see really. It doesn’t let you use multiple accounts or services with one instance of the application. It supports Twitter and Identica but you can’t do both from one window. As it’s so lightweight it’s no hassle to fire up another instance of Turpial and sign in with your Identica details. I’m guessing you could also do the same if you wanted to monitor multiple Twitter accounts. It still performs really well and doesn’t seem to add any strain to my system. In this case an Intel Core i3 laptop. Not a high end one either. Identica will be closing fairly soon and when it does that’ll take care of one of these dilemmas for me categorically. For now if you’re an Identica fan and not a Twitter user, of which there are some, you can use it as an Identica only client with all the same features. Plus if you’d like to add features or get involved there’s a Github repository for the project. You can check out the code and play around with it if you have the skills. The beauty of Open Source.

The profile page on Turpial with a form for all your account details, name, URL, description and so on

The profile page

So if you’re looking for a sane alternative to Gwibber and you’re tired of pulling your hair out (I haven’t got much left) give Turpial a spin. If you have any other suggestions for Linux microblogging clients I should try also please free free to add them in a comment on this post. Since Adobe AIR no longer comes for Linux I’ve left Tweetdeck off the list. I never quite understood all the fuss over Tweetdeck anyway. It’s not FOSS and I prefer to use open solutions wherever I can.

So there you have it, Turpial is well worth a look. Happy tweeting and/or denting!

Dan

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Fixture List: 28th Jan 2013

a drawing of a calendar with day circled in pen

Fixture Lis

Hey hey hey! That was my Fat Albert greeting, in case you couldn’t tell. Doesn’t work quite so well in text form I’ll admit. It’s almost the end of January. How did that happen? We’ve had some snow in Liverpool over the last week and the news has gone crazy over it. Advising people not to leave their homes, stock up on canned goods, prepare the nuclear bunkers etc. You’d think it was the end of the world. I wonder if perhaps it was a slow news week and that’s why we needed a special extra half hour news program on prime time BBC One just to tell us there’s been snow. Look out the window, you could tell that pretty quickly for yourself. The hysteria that surrounds snow in this country mystifies me. I did like the MET office advice that building more snow men could help guard against flooding though. No science or logic behind that but a nice dose of humour, something to keep the kids busy. Anyway, enough snow ranting. Let’s see what’s coming up this week.

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Monday January 28th @ 8pm UK – Episode 297. Live Linux Outlaws for 2 hours via Icecast and YouTube streams. Join myself and Fab as we record the latest show. More details at – http://sixgun.org/live

Wednesday January 30th @ 4:30pm UK – Live FLOSS Weekly is on once again. This week I’ll be joining Randal Schwartz to interview the people behind Auphonic, a tool to automate post production of podcasts and radio shows. Obviously something right up my street. Taping is streamed live via – http://live.twit.tv Continue reading

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Fixture List: 14th Jan 2013

a drawing of a calendar with day circled in pen

Fixture List

Well well well, it looks like 2013 is just determined to stick around doesn’t it? If you were hiding under the covers hoping it would go away you’re out of luck, sorry. On the upside though the Mayans were wrong about the end of the world. For what it’s worth my 2013 has kicked off reasonably well. It’s early days but things are shaping up so far. Finally my festive chest infection seems to be lifting and I can sing again, not quite at my best but getting there. Good news considering I’m supposed to be recording an album at the moment with my band 20lb Sounds. As you’ll see from this weeks fixture list I’m also trying to get back into doing some acoustic gigs around Liverpool this year. For a while I was posting little acoustic performances on YouTube every Friday but it very quickly fizzled out as I got distracted and busy. I hope to revive that soon and share more videos with you here. As you can probably tell I couldn’t think of anything particularly witty or amusing to say in this opening, so this will have to do. Let’s see what’s coming up anyway…

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Monday January 14th @ 8pm UK – Live Linux Outlaws for 2 hours via Icecast and YouTube streams. Join myself and Fab as we record the latest show and chat via IRC. We love to hear you comments about how wrong we are. More details at – http://sixgun.org/live

Tuesday January 15th @ 10am UK – It’s the second week of my WEA online radio course at Toxteth TV. I promise I won’t mention it every week as that could get boring, but the second session is the last chance to come along and enrol. If you’re interested leave a comment or drop me an email. It’s been very busy so far already and places are limited. Continue reading

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Podcasting Course – Friday Jan 25th – FACT Liverpool

microphoneHello folks, I hope you’re all well? Today’s post is a gratuitous bit of advertising for a podcasting course I’m running on behalf of FACT in Liverpool. That’s not the Foundation Against Copyright Theft no, lot’s of people keep asking me that. I don’t think they’re so into podcasting to be honest. Given their beliefs on new media and control of intellectial property on the Internet. It’s the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool. They really crammed that acronym in didn’t they? Nevertheless it’s a very cool place that some of you may know. It’s an art gallery, performance space, teaching centre and even includes a great cinema with 3 screens. They show all kinds of indie films there and you can take drinks from the bar into the theatre. That can’t be bad. It’s well known around the city and well established having been there since around 2000.

I did a podcasting course for them late last year and it went very well. It’s a full day of training and everyone who came enjoyed it and gave nice feedback, without my prompting I should add. I’ll take you through the background of planning and producing a good podcast first, then we’ll do some recording and get onto editing tips and tricks., before finishing off with some information about encoding, tagging and publishing your audio masterpiece. By the end of the day everyone should have a finished (or at least mostly finished) professional sounding podcast to show for their efforts and all the skills needed to head out and create more. Continue reading

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Luis Suarez – Handball Isn’t Just An Olympic Sport

A picture of Luis Suarez in red Liverpool kit during a game

As some of you will know I’m a keen supporter of Liverpool Football Club, and sometimes I write about football matters here. An incident in the match this weekend has gotten me fired up and I want to address it. We had an FA Cup tie against the mighty Mansfield Town FC. They’re members of the Blue Square Premier League, which is one rung below the bottom tier of professional English football. Hardly giants then but the FA Cup regularly throws up these great David and Goliath battles. Going into it I was pretty confident and I hoped we’d avoid this potential embarrassing banana skin.

In the end we won the game 2-1 but it was hotly contested and the non-league boys did themselves proud. Our new signing Daniel Sturridge started and scored his first goal after only 7 minutes. I’m very happy about all that. However, around the hour mark Sturridge was substituted for the ever controversial Luis Suarez. The Uruguayan striker is our top scorer and easily the best player this season, but he does like to bend the rules a bit at times. In scoring Liverpool’s second goal he illegally controlled the ball with his hand before putting it in. This has caused much upset among Mansfield fans since and rightly so in my opinion.

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Fixture List: 7th Jan 2013

a drawing of a calendar with day circled in pen

Fixture List

Hello folks, so the second week of 2013 is upon us already. Before you know it we’ll be back into summer again, let’s hope so hey. And let’s hope it’s a much better summer than we had last year. One nice trade off for a crap summer though seems to be a milder winter, or so they say. I’m no Michael Fish but it’s not freezing here in the UK and it seems very mild, so maybe there’s something to it. With 2013 well and truly under way things are starting to pick up for me and will continue to do so I hope. Here’s a quick head’s up about some of the places you can expect to find me this week. There’s podcasts, training courses and more. So let’s take a look…

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Monday January 7th @ 8pm UK – Live Linux Outlaws for 2 hours via Icecast and YouTube streams. The first show of 2013. Join myself and Fab as we record the latest show. More details at – http://sixgun.org/live

You can also now get tickets to our LOL event on February 17th at LEAF.

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