There is a really annoying bug in Empathy in Ubuntu 10.10 - it refuses to connect to MSN. MSN works fine from other IM clients like Kopete. So, I have been using Kopete on Ubuntu as well. But Kopete being a KDE application is not really a great substitute.

Finally, there is a fix for this Empathy bug. Credit for this fix goes to kakaroto.

Here is what you need to do:

• Open the Terminal and execute the command given below:

• Search for a line which contains

• Replace that line to

CONTACTS = ("contacts.msn.com", "MBI")

• Save the file and restart Empathy. MSN should work now.