Since the latest version of pino decided to become as stable as an alpha of Windows 95, I’ve been looking at other Linux native Twitter clients, and here were some of the problems I ran into:
1. Stability. Gwibber was especially bad, not managing to stay open for more than a few minutes at a time, although it was better than pino, which was crashing whenever I minimized it to the tray.
2. RAM Usage. If it weren’t for this one, I’d be using Qwit. However, Qwit is a HUGE RAM hog, taking 235+ MB of RAM when idle, which is more than Firefox with more than 30 tabs open!
3. Lack of Features. I also noticed that some basic features were missing in a few clients, such as lack of a tray icon in Buzzbird and Yasst. Twitim is a truly read-and-post only client, and I like to have a URL shortener at a minimum, and preferably a picture uploader too. Also, it doesn’t have an icon at all! I just get my “object” icon in the tray… not pretty.
So, my final vote? Turpial. It’s a great client, albeit currently Spanish only, but Tweeting and replying/DMing is not that hard to get without reading anything anyway!
Finally, you can look forward to a more in-depth review of some of these on Allison Sharidan’s NosillaCast sometime soon!
The Binary Clock 
Pino is pretty stable for me and because of Gwibber’s inability for stability, it’s now my default Twitter client.
As you pointed out, Qwit is a ram hog – which is a dear shame as it’s easily one of the best twitter clients available.
Turpial, despite being in Spanish, is in a league of its own. Not only is it “light” in comparison to the rest, it’s packing the features in. TwitPic is a must for me and it scores points on that.
Annoyingly, I always have to force quit it, as the tray icon doesn’t work.
Hmm, I guess Pino’s problems are specific to my system, I’ll have to see if the next version fixes it. Also, I quite agree, Qwit is a great client, and I used it for around three days, but as soon as I started using it, my laptop started being really sluggish, and it isn’t hard to tell why, it was using 235.4 MB of RAM! On my 1GB system, that was too much, although on, say, an 8GB system, it’d win hands down. Then I went back to your 14 Linux Twitter clients reviewed, which is where I found most of these. When I saw the post about Turpial, I decided to try it, gave up on it 3 minutes later because it was in Spanish, tried Yasst, Twitim, Buzzbird, and Qwitik, then came back because none of those were very good. It’s now my primary Twitter client, and I love it! Your force quit problem is probably of the same ilk of my Pino stability problem, because “Salir” from the tray icon works great. Also, I think that if Buzzbird had a tray icon, it would have very little competition on my laptop because it’s so well done, but as you said, “that lack of a tray icon just bugs the heck out of me.” 🙂 Finally, you have a great blog, which is in my Morning Coffee every day! Thanks for doing it! Oh, and I like the new layout.