My aMSN wouldn’t login today. Went to aMSN forums, and read that MSN has changed its server protocol, and they had released patches in 0.97.2 to address that.
My aMSN was installed using Synaptic, but when I tried to update it, it says I already have the newest built version 0.97. I understood that they could not release the new version just as fast as the source, and they need someone to build and test it, before they can announce it available on the “official” repository.
Fortunately I found a site which bridges that gap. It sacrifices possible quality issues for a faster release (so that I don’t have to build the updates from source). http://www.getdeb.net/ produces Ubuntu builds for new applications that has not been released in the official repository yet. Best of all, it is released as debs which integrates into the package manager beautifully. The almost one-click process takes me through removing the older aMSN, replaces it with the new one, and retains my settings (my email id on the login screen and chat history were intact and accessible). Of course, I was able to log in peacefully after the upgrade.
+1 for Ubuntu.