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Sometime some people ask me what jabber is. Jabber is an open protocole for instant messaging. It has the same features as AIM, ICQ, Yahoo IM, MSN, etc... and other features. The good things with Jabber is that it is an open protocole, and that there is not only one server with an official client. - No one owns Jabber and anybody is free to install his own Jabber server (like anybody is free to install his own email server). The IDs are in the same form as emails : login@server.tld. And like you can send an email to people on an other server, you can chat with people on an other server. - It is an open protocol. This mean that anyone is free to create a new client (the details about the protocol are public). This is the reason why there are some much different Jabber clients avaible for all operating systems. You select the one you prefere :) AIM, ICQ, Yahoo IM and MSN are not open protocols. They are owned by a company. You are connecting to theirs servers, and they can ask you to use the official clients only (which are most of the time closed source: you don't know what the program do, but they want you to use it). They control everything. If you want to start using Jabber, the first thing to do is to install a Jabber Client. Select one in this list. Gaim and PSI are good choices. Then you have to register an account on a Jabber server using your client. Select one in the list, or you can also use my jabber server: linuxrulez.info. Now, you're connected, your jabber id is login@selected-server.tld, and you can start adding people on your buddy list :) |