Comment 3 for bug 740168

I found a workaround, that you can use if you're having the same problem and you miss the unread messages badge on pidgin 2.7.11 as I did:

- Go to Administration/System and open Synaptic Package Manager
- In the text box, search for "libpurple"
- You will find two packages, libpurple-bin and libpurple0. Select them, and go to the menu "Package-->Force version"
- In the dialog box that will appear, select version: 2.6.6-1ubuntu4, and click on "Force version"
- Click on the button "Apply", and restart Pidgin. The pidgin helper will behave now as usual, showing the number of unread messages in the badge.