There is a lot of talk on the ubuntu forums about the need to replace Pidgin with Empathy. Although I should state at this point that of course everyone is entitled to there opinions, it seems to me that this decision hasn’t really asked to larger ubuntu community as to how they would feel about this. For those that don’t participate on IRC or do not use Pidgin (in preference to another IRC client) or don’t use this type of application well then this is most likely never to effect you! but for those that do, well you may be in for a little surprise. Upon initial install there is no IRC support you need to install the telepathy packages to enable this (see launchpad link below) I can’t see why at this point this application has been split into several packages instead of just being bundled as one. For me the need to go package hunting is just annoying to say the least! (but again I must stress this project is still in development) But don’t just take my work for it, have a look for yourself and decide!
Here are some links to look at for some more detailed information on Empathy…
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EmpathyVsPidginUsability
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Telepathy
http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/