Alternate Xmpp Clients

[Lukc]

Hi * \o_

I’ve seen complains against Spark on several occasions on these forums, and people saying they’re not joining the XMPP room because Spark really s**ks, so I decided to present a few alternative XMPP clients that may satisfy you a bit more.

Gajim

The first I’d want to present is Gajim. It’s the first XMPP client I used. It’s written in Python, so tends to eat a bit more memory and be slightly slower, but it’s also the XMPP client with the largest number of features.

It is still in development and if you are on Linux and don’t want a command-line-only client, this is the one I would recommend the most.

http://gajim.org/

Psi

Psi is a XMPP client written in C++. So it tends to be a little lighter and faster than Gajim. It is almost as complete, and its features will probably be more than enough, even for advanced users of XMPP.

I never used it, but I heard a lot of satisfied users talk about it. Particularly if you are on Windows and if there’s a problem with Gajim (yeah, those things happen on Windows™).

http://psi-im.org/

Jappix

Jappix is a webclient. I don’t have much to tell about it. If you don’t want to install any XMPP client, you can use the service on jappix.com. Be aware, however, that to connect to the current OpenFire XMPP server on outpost2.net, you’ll have to subscribe to the outpost2.net server, which you can do even from jappix.com. (if that’s not clear, and it is not, when you are subscribing on jappix.com, choose “outpost2.net” as your server)

http://jappix.com/

Other clients

I wouldn’t want to make a monster topic here, but I wouldn’t want not to be exhaustive either. So, if neither Psi or Gajim satisfies you, you can look for another client here:

http://xmpp.org/xmpp-software/clients/

I find I avoid using Spark because of the amount of clicking needed to join the channel, and because the chat window doesn't minimize to the tray. I feel that auto join and minimize to tray are important features to get people to join, and to stay hanging around.

Both Gajim and Psi have those features. Jappix also has an auto-join, but I suppose the tray part will not work from a web browser.



If anyone is interested in a CLI-only client, to be used in a UNIX terminal, I’m using mcabber, but poezio is being more and more recommended.

All the clients I’ve shown you are under Free, Libre and Open Source (FLOSS) licenses.