Ok, so I'm moving on from pidgin, to skype.
I found how to install skype here:
http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2012/install-skype-on-fedora-centos- red-hat-rhel-scientific-linux-sl/
It works. Except for my old Logitech QuickCam Messenger camera. But I found this excellent hack that shows how to get it to work:
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/219
which basically says that skype expects the v4l1 libraries, not the default v4l2 so one needs to preload the v4l1compat.so library - the 32 bit version, to match skype.
For my 64-bit Fedora this would be:
#!/bin/bash LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype
So I did that, but I'm getting this error:
ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
Lo and behold though, the camera works despite that error. So for my peace of mind, can anybody explain what's going on?