Revision of Chatting from Sun, 12/08/2013 - 04:01

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 it's extensions.

We have similar applications in Trisquel's repositories. Some of these are:

1. Empathy -- GNOME's default client,
2. Kopete -- KDE's default client,
3. Kadu (which supports the XMPP and the Gadu-Gadu protocols),
4. Gajim -- a full-featured XMPP client,
5. Psi -- for the XMPP protocol only,
6. Tkabber -- (idem),
7. MCabber -- (idem and terminal-based),
8. aMSN -- for the Windows Live Messenger protocol only
9. emesene (idem),

When deciding which application is best for you, consider:

1. Which features do I want?
   1. plain text messaging
   2. voice calls
   3. video calls
2. Which operating systems do my friends use?
   1. x y and z are multi-platform
3. Which messaging protocols do my friends use?

The XMPP protocol

XMPP is an open protocol. You can make an XMPP account from any website that offers accounts. You could also set up your own XMPP server. Our community talked about where and how to make an account here.

You may connect with users on any XMPP server, no matter where you make your account. This is called interdomain federation. Older protocols tend to be centralized.

The Trisquel project hosts an XMPP server for it's members. In this case, the "domain" is member.trisquel.info, the "username" is the one you would register when becoming a member. And so is the "password". By entering those pieces of information in any chat client that supports XMPP, you can chat with any other XMPP user.

You could similarly use your Google account for XMPP. You would choose gmail.com as a "domain" and inform the remaining fields ("username" and "password") accordingly.

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.

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).

The IRC protocol

The XMPP protocol (and the centralized protocols mentioned earlier) aims at communicating in a private manner (although you must trust the server's owner to respect your privacy!): the contact must be added to your list before being able to send her messages. The IRC protocol fulfills another need: that of creating discussion forums (called "channels") where you can read what anybody has to say on the topic (channels are thematic) and anybody can read you. This documentation explains how to connect to the #trisquel channel with Pidgin or XChat (a popular client for the IRC protocol only). The provided information is easily adaptable to connect to another channel.

Encryption

Please see chat-encryption for information on how to encrypt your chat communications.