Need Help Picking Appropriate IM Program

Having trouble finding an IM program that will work with Yahoo Instant Messenger, specifically. I'm attempting to use an alternative to Pidgin (for reasons of my own), so Pidgin is off the table for the purposes of this question.

Using the Synaptic Package Manager, I have loaded and tried attym, kopete, and sim this evening, but they just cycle and cycle and try to connect but never succeed. Strangely enough, the same thing happens when I use wine to operate the straight downloaded Yahoo program.

The other packages that claim to be interfaces that work with Yahoo are centerim and jabber, but when I load those packages up, there isn't an option to open them up as programs; if I can't find them on the Application menu, and they don't show up in Add/Remove Programs, I can't do anything with them.

So, I'm open to any advice. Is there a setting I need to alter to encourage some of the non-connecting programs to connect? Is there a step in installation that I'm missing that will let me attempt to start up the programs I can't find? Is there any way I can tell if the Yahoo servers are just down tonight, by coincidence? I'm wide open, here, people.