Introduction

Like most things proprietary, OpenSource people have written their own InstantMessenger, called Jabber. Jabber is built on a robust model, similar to SMTP and HTTP - and completely unlike IRC's unscalable mess :) It is based on a core XML router with small plugin modules handling all the various parts of the InstantMessaging. It supports "Transports" which allow a Jabber user to talk to users of other InstantMessenger networks such as AIM, MSN, ICQ, YahooMessenger, SMTP, IRC, IMAP and many others. It has clients for MicrosoftWindows, Linux, various PDA's and other machines/devices.

You may want a nice simple introduction to SettingUpJabber?. PerryLorier has also written a JabberWiki.

Clients for Linux

GTK/GNOME

• Gabber for GNOME (uses GTK)
• Gaim, a multiprotocol GTK2 InstantMessenger which has a Jabber plugin
• Gnome Jabber, a newcomer which is full of GTK2 goodness. (The web page says that the author has stopped development of this and is working with the Gossip authors.)
• Gabber2, the GTK2 port of Gabber. Still in development.
• Gossip, another GTK2 Jabber client

Qt/KDE

• Psi for Qt
• Konverse for KDE. Webpage was last updated in 2001.
• Kopete for KDE. Seems to be the main IM client for KDE.

Console

• imcom for console (requires Python)
• jabmsg batch-mode Jabber message sender (requires Perl)
• CenterIcq, a multiprotocol Curses InstantMessenger which has a Jabber plugin

Clients for MicrosoftWindows

• Exodus for MicrosoftWindows
• Jabber.com's client for MicrosoftWindows. (Current version seems to only let you connect to Jabber.com's server)
• JAJC for MicrosoftWindows
• Rhymbox, MSN Messenger for Jabber. Looks really nice in Windows XP

Other Platforms

• tkabber, written in TCL/Tk (requires a couple of extra TCL libraries) so this should run on any OperatingSystem that TCL/Tk runs on.
• Nitro for MacOSX

Client notes

• You can log in multiple times on the same account - this is what the "resource" is. So you could log in from different machines, and give each a different resource name.
  
  
• If a message is sent to just your id (without specifying a resource) then it goes to whichever of your clients has the highest "priority" (which you can set at log in time).
  
  
• If you are not online when a message is sent to you, your jabber server will hold it for you until you next connect.

Client-specific notes

tkabber

• If you are part of a conference, you can click on the Subject: to get a list of actions.

Running a Jabber Server

Having trouble getting the Jabber server under Debian working? Here are some hints.

I register as a new user and it won't let me login, I get a 401 error message.

Debian commented out the mod_auth_plain module from their sample config, presumably to pressure users into using secure authentication methods. While this is a worthy goal, they overlooked that creating new users uses mod_auth_plain. If you uncomment this module it will work.

Using Transports

Your jabber server will have a list of transports you can use. These will provide communications with other services, such as multiuser conferencing, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, or even SMTP (ie, standard email). Normally they have descriptive names like 'icq.jabber.org' so are easy to guess, but it pays to have a lot at the transports available.

ICQ transport

There are two main implementations of this around the place. ICQ and AIM actually use the same protocol, so the AIM-t transport can be used as an ICQ transport as well. There is also a JIT transport which handles ICQ and ICQ-SMS a lot better than the AIM-t transport.

If your jabber server uses the AIM-t transport, you should subscribe to the icq.jabber.domain.whatever agent, using your ICQ username and password, and then you can add contacts of the form icqid@icq.jabber.domain.whatever. You can send SMS's by sending something like

SEND-SMS:+cellphonenumber:<message>

to any ICQ recipient on your jabber list.

If your jabber server uses the JIT transport, then use it instead of AIM-t. Its a lot nicer, supports user searching correctly, handles SMS better, so on. Subscribe as above (check what the agent is actually called first!). You can add contacts of the form icqid@jit.jabber.domain.whatever, for icq, or phonenumber@sms.jabber.domain.whatever for sms.

NOTE: all server names mentioned above are guides only, make sure you get the correct DNS name of the transport for your jabber server!