Revision of Chatting from Sun, 12/08/2013 - 03:26
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Choose your client
Pidgin, an instant messenging application, comes with Trisquel. It supports many instant messaging protocols, is extensible, and is very popular. Search Trisquel's repositories for "pidgin", to check out the extensions.We have many communication applications like Pidgin in Trisquel's repositories.
Some of these are:
- 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 Messenger protocol only
- emesene (idem),
The XMPP protocol
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 within its 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 Messenger or Skype (for text messages only) 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". By entering those pieces of information in any XMPP client (or any multi-protocol client by specifying XMPP as a "protocol"), any member can therefore chat with other users of XMPP clients. Users who want to use a Google account would choose gmail.com as a "domain" and inform the remaining fields ("username" and "password") accordingly. One can also set up her own XMPP server but this is out of the scope of this documentation.
Once connected to the server, you can chat with the contacts in the list saved there (which is convenient if you use several clients and/or several computers). You can invite a new contact too. To do so, you must know her username and enter it in the client (in Pidgin: Ctrl+B or menu "Buddies/Add buddy..."). They will then be notified of your invitation and accept it or not.
Let us notice that XMPP has been greatly extended in a number of ways. The letter X in XMPP actually means "eXtensible". Today, XMPP not only transports text messages but voice and video too. Of course the clients in use must support those features to profit from them. Video conferences between Pidgin clients work great for instance.
