Miss windows live messenger on ubuntu?

You won’t miss it anymore. Try for yourself:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install emesene

Check their forum for themes, emoticons and sounds:

http://emesene.org/smf/index.php?action=forum

Features:

Emesene features:

* Clean and easy to use GUI
* Tabbed chat
* Custom emoticons
* File transfers
* Offline messaging
* Personal messages
* Nudges
* Multilingual GUI
* Customization
o Themes
o Smileys
o Sounds
o GUI
o Conversation format
* Plugins
* MSN Plus!
* Chat logging

Features available in development versions

* Webcam receiving
* Winks