XMPP chats

[kringle]

given recent events, bumping this thread!!! 

i had no idea xmpp could be so feature rich! i'd assumed it was only text based like IRC. i think the same barriers exist what with difficulty and confusion when trying to find communities/actual chatrooms to talk in, but it seems like a good handful of melonlanders use it and might be able to advise, so i'll give it a shot  

[cyberfun1 (dizz)]

XMPP is totally frickin awesome! I got some friends on Discord to use it and its way better than Discord! They had a real easy time setting it up too!

[aletheos]

Are there any XMPP clients that currently support screen sharing, like the way Discord _{or Teams(bleh )}does it(screen or window, at a decent enough framerate), or at all?

[grubbyfox]

I've been trying to understand it a little bit, lmao. which ones do you guys like the most for customization? i'm considering trying gajima?? for windows. but it says its for windows 10 and above, so I'm guessing it wont work on Win7

Not sure I can convince my friends to move to it tho, lol because it seems a bit complicated.

[kringle]

Are there any XMPP clients that currently support screen sharing, like the way Discord _{or Teams(bleh )}does it(screen or window, at a decent enough framerate), or at all?

no xmpp does not have screenshare functionality. some of the clients support voice and video call but thats as far as it goes. personay at this point im concidering looking into some sprt of seperate toolset to do screenshare but im not sure where to start looking yet.

I've been trying to understand it a little bit, lmao. which ones do you guys like the most for customization? i'm considering trying gajima?? for windows. but it says its for windows 10 and above, so I'm guessing it wont work on Win7

Not sure I can convince my friends to move to it tho, lol because it seems a bit complicated.

personally ive been using psi+ on desktop. i couldnt figure out how to get it all pretty like in the screenshots on the download page but i was able to customize all the fonts and text colors and thats enough for me right now. not sure if you've found it yet but i found this website thats been pretty helpful, they have a page that lists several clients

[lakes]

That said, XMPP by itself is a great way to chat to people live, somewhat like IRC but with way more features. Since it's still actively developed, it even supports voice and video calls these days!! And the other great thing is that since it is somewhat old already, a few of the programs that are made for XMPP and some of the community around it also embrace the retro feeling.

i like xmpp. it makes sense that it's so feature-rich when you consider a big part of xmpp is the ability to use plugins i think & the x even stands for extensible

I've been trying to understand it a little bit, lmao. which ones do you guys like the most for customization? i'm considering trying gajima?? for windows. but it says its for windows 10 and above, so I'm guessing it wont work on Win7

Not sure I can convince my friends to move to it tho, lol because it seems a bit complicated.

you should probably use pidgin then, it even has a list of older versions on sourceforge

[grubbyfox]

i like xmpp. it makes sense that it's so feature-rich when you consider a big part of xmpp is the ability to use plugins i think & the x even stands for extensible

you should probably use pidgin then, it even has a list of older versions on sourceforge

i'd like to give it a go, but i'd like to have an encrypted chat, and from my understanding, that requires a plugin (lurch?) for pidgin, but when looking it up, people seem to be displeased with lurch/encryption with pidgin, without explaining why - just telling people to "dont use pidgin, use gajim"

also does anyone know a large list of free addresses/domains? a few of the ones i've found links to online have been flagged by my browser for potential harm

[arcus]

i'd like to give it a go, but i'd like to have an encrypted chat, and from my understanding, that requires a plugin (lurch?) for pidgin, but when looking it up, people seem to be displeased with lurch/encryption with pidgin, without explaining why - just telling people to "dont use pidgin, use gajim"

Don't use XMPP for end-to-end encrypted chats. All the clients use different and older encryption methods. The few that are up to date with encryption are more technical clients.

Gajim is a nice client, as long as you're not worried about encryption. This article covers more clients in detail.

If encryption is important, but you don't need activist tier security, Deltachat is a good alternative. It doesn't support post quantum cryptography, but there are plans to support it this year. It's very easy to use, though the way accounts are tied by devices might be confusing.

also does anyone know a large list of free addresses/domains? a few of the ones i've found links to online have been flagged by my browser for potential harm

https://list.jabber.at/
https://join.movim.eu/

Are there any XMPP clients that currently support screen sharing, like the way Discord _{or Teams(bleh )}does it(screen or window, at a decent enough framerate), or at all?

no xmpp does not have screenshare functionality.

Movim does. I haven't tried it, so I can't comment on how well it works.

[kringle]

Movim does. I haven't tried it, so I can't comment on how well it works.

oh neat!

last i checked this functionality was still in development, so its cool to see that its actually live. tho now that i'm thinking about it they might have just meant screenshare in the "spaces/group server" sense, because i know thats also in development. i'll see if i can convince my one friend i bothered into setting up XMPP to test if the screenshare function works when they're next available, will update thread with my findings!

[aletheos]

Movim does. I haven't tried it, so I can't comment on how well it works.

Neato, I've signed up. I assume you mean their website/webapp at mov.im.
I also got the application Gajim... don't have any friends yet though 👉👈
aletheos@movim.eu

[grubbyfox]

Don't use XMPP for end-to-end encrypted chats. All the clients use different and older encryption methods. The few that are up to date with encryption are more technical clients.

I didn't know! I could have sworn Gajim says it's encrypted on their website, but they dont specify how IIRC, so...yeah.
I use Signal for a few chats, and while it's not exactly "national security" chats lmfao xD it's still like, I do think it's kinda a must to offer a decent E2EE. At least for a modern program.

I get that the Escargot MSN/Crosstalk MSN doesn't feature it, since they natively didn't have that, but I'm surprised they dont have any way to offer it later at some point.

Seeing as how XMPP is being explained as "kinda like email", afaik there are emails now that offer encryption, so I'm surprised why XMPP hasn't followed a long.

That kinda bummed me out tho. I reckon XMPP is not for me then. I ended up trying Pidgin and Gajim btw, but they were very barebones. Gajim seemed to be able to have themes added, but I couldnt find any website with themes (that also didnt look like a scam site lol).

Overall I think the idea of XMPP is really cool, but encryption these days is so important imo, that idk, actively choosing a chat program without it feels wrong for me at least.

[Rubbereon]

I use Signal for a few chats, and while it's not exactly "national security" chats lmfao xD it's still like, I do think it's kinda a must to offer a decent E2EE. At least for a modern program.

I get that the Escargot MSN/Crosstalk MSN doesn't feature it, since they natively didn't have that, but I'm surprised they dont have any way to offer it later at some point.

Seeing as how XMPP is being explained as "kinda like email", afaik there are emails now that offer encryption, so I'm surprised why XMPP hasn't followed a long.

Telegram has much stronger protections that even when they get asked by cops to hand over their chatlogs the cops can't do anything with it. Kinda scary if you think about it.

Melonland is more like an email group/list (if you even know about those, they are still in use in some tech-oriented places, but they are becoming extremely rare these days) than XMPP, I know what I'm saying been using both, but even then using a messaging app feels nothing like using an email to chat with other people. IRC might give off that look, maybe, but yeah it's far from being the same experience imo.

[arcus]

I didn't know! I could have sworn Gajim says it's encrypted on their website, but they dont specify how IIRC, so...yeah.

It technically is, but it uses an out of date version: 0.3 while the current version is 9.0. 3.0 uses an older method and has some major issues.

I use Signal for a few chats, and while it's not exactly "national security" chats lmfao xD it's still like, I do think it's kinda a must to offer a decent E2EE. At least for a modern program.

From a purely encryption standpoint, it is. Its issues are metadata related.

Seeing as how XMPP is being explained as "kinda like email", afaik there are emails now that offer encryption, so I'm surprised why XMPP hasn't followed a long.

It doesn't by design, just like XMPP. The encryption is tacked on, and has similar issues as XMPP because of it. Another explanation.

Proton's encryption is misleading. If you send an email to someone with a non-Proton address, it's not encrypted unless they use PGP (which again, has issues) and you add their key. Besides that, even if they don't hand over email contents to police, Proton has handed them user's payment details and other metadata when legally required. More details.

Telegram has much stronger protections that even when they get asked by cops to hand over their chatlogs the cops can't do anything with it. Kinda scary if you think about it.

Not true. Signal's encryption is objectively better and has won a major award, while Telegram has their own encryption with flawed design choices.

Neato, I've signed up. I assume you mean their website/webapp at mov.im.
I also got the application Gajim... don't have any friends yet though 👉👈
aletheos@movim.eu

Post it in this thread too for better visibility.

[grubbyfox]

Telegram has much stronger protections that even when they get asked by cops to hand over their chatlogs the cops can't do anything with it. Kinda scary if you think about it.

Melonland is more like an email group/list (if you even know about those, they are still in use in some tech-oriented places, but they are becoming extremely rare these days) than XMPP, I know what I'm saying been using both, but even then using a messaging app feels nothing like using an email to chat with other people. IRC might give off that look, maybe, but yeah it's far from being the same experience imo.

Oh for sure. I dont expect a forum like melonland or public groups (even closed off public groups, kinda like locked off subreddits etc) to have E2EE or in general encryption beyond what normal websites do. If I go there using a browser, I have to assume that my information/what I say and talk about can be seen/found etc. To me, that is a trade off I am willing to accept. I dont go out in a public park and yap loudly about sensitive information, lol.

Emails, from what I recall, have always been a very "unsafe" platform to share information on. Kinda like just mailing a post card with no envelope, atleast that's how I've been told. I guess both XMPP and MSN (escargot+crosstalk) are sort of the same. Just postcards flying back and forth, and the text is not written in a secret code that needs to be dechipered.

But Tuta email I think is one of the email providers that offers decryption. AFAIK the encryption would be one-sided if only one is using Tuta? But you can also set passwords for the emails for non-encrypted emails.

Either way, I'm really bummed about XMPP not offering real encryption. I mean, at that point it's imo no better than just using Crosstalk MSN for me, lol, which atleast offers a lot of fun customization, haha.