You may want to check out Dino.im. For easy XMPP there is also Quicksy.im that's a fork of Conversations (from the author of Conversations) but using contact book for people discovery.
I tried Dino, Gajim, Psi, Psi+, Empathy, but I still prefer the UI/UX of Pidgin. It knows all I need at the moment, with the exception of Transport commands.
