Not really a guide per say but ive _always_ been annoyed with the fact that yahoo will not work with the version thats in the repo. I also enjoy having my e-mail, im, twitter, irc, and skype "txt" all in one. So after spending _way_ to long screwing with this, i figured id make someones life just a little easier.

Should be as simple as copy and paste so what took me a few hours of looking and playing with should only take you 2min.

Code:
#Install intltool for the compile, gtkspell for spelling and perl-dev for scripts
apt-get install intltool libgtkspell-dev libperl-dev


#Make our working dir's
mkdir /tmp/pidgin_shit && cd /tmp/pidgin_shit


#Download and extract
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin/files/Pidgin/2.7.9/pidgin-2.7.9.tar.bz2
tar xvf pidgin-2.7.9.tar.bz2
cd pidgin-2.7.9


#Compile it, if you dont want perl use --disable-perl
./configure --disable-screensaver --disable-startup-notification \
--disable-gstreamer --disable-vv --disable-meanwhile --disable-avahi \
--disable-dbus --disable-tcl --prefix=/usr
make
make install


#Down and install microblog for twitter
cd ..
wget http://microblog-purple.googlecode.com/files/mbpurple-0.3.0.tar.gz
tar xvf mbpurple-0.3.0.tar.gz
cd mbpurple-0.3.0
make
make install


#Down and install the lib for Off The Record
cd ..
wget http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/libotr-3.2.0.tar.gz
tar xvf libotr-3.2.0.tar.gz
cd libotr-3.2.0
./configure
make
make install


#Down and install OTR for pidgin
cd ..
wget http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/pidgin-otr-3.2.0.tar.gz
tar xvf pidgin-otr-3.2.0.tar.gz
cd pidgin-otr-3.2.0
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install


#Down and install some fancy plugins ;)
cd ..
wget https://www.guifications.org/attachments/download/135/purple-plugin_pack-2.6.3.tar.bz2
tar xvf purple-plugin_pack-2.6.3.tar.bz2
cd purple-plugin_pack-2.6.3
./configure
make
make install


#Down and install pretty notifications
cd ..
wget https://www.guifications.org/attachments/download/143/pidgin-guifications-2.16.tar.bz2
tar xvf pidgin-guifications-2.16.tar.bz2
cd pidgin-guifications-2.16
./configure
make
make install


#Down and install skype "text" support ...
cd /usr/lib/purple-2/
wget http://eion.robbmob.com/libskype.so
And thats all there is to it, if you need to test to make sure its working feel free to send me a msg "vvpalin" on everything except skype.

Cheers