Revision of Chatting from Tue, 01/29/2013 - 20:47

Choose your client

Trisquel's default application to chat in an instant fashion is Pidgin. It supports a lot of instant messaging protocols and is very popular.

Nevertheless many other free software clients exist and are readily available in Trisquel's repositories: Empathy (GNOME's default client), Kopete (KDE's default client), Kadu (which supports the XMPP and the Gadu-Gadu protocols), Gajim (a full-featured XMPP client), Psi (for the XMPP protocol only), Tkabber (idem), MCabber (idem and terminal-based), aMSN (for the Windows Live Mensenger protocol only), emesene (idem), ... and many other clients! You can try them and pick your favorite or just trust Trisquel's default: Pidgin.

The XMPP protocol and the Jabber network

Of course you want the client to talk the protocol you use. Today, the XMPP protocol is, by far, the most famous one... and it deserves it! Google uses it within GMail, Facebook in within social network, Apple supports it in the default (and proprietary) client for Macs, etc. In fact, many protocols seem to slowly disappear in favor of XMPP. Even if they are still working, protocols such as ICQ, Windows Live Mensenger or Skype are now automatically translated to XMPP when required. In fact, the companies behind those centralized protocols set up gateways to the network where most XMPP clients are connected (including, e.g., those chatting through a GMail page).

Indeed XMPP is an open protocol and anybody can set up a server that is, or not, connected to the other XMPP servers (enabling or not the communication with the clients connected to them). This is called interdomain federation and contrasts with the centralized nature of the older protocols. Notice, in particular, that the Trisquel project hosts an XMPP server for its members. In this case, the "domain" is member.trisquel.info, the "username" is the one registered when becoming a member and so is the "password".