Jabber
I was tired of the jabber.org server going down every 20 minutes so I decided I needed to switch to a new jabber server.
Rather than just going with my google account like a lot of people have been doing lately, I figured that since I was going through the trouble of switching IDs anyway, I might as well set up my own server so my jabber id could match my email address.
Someone on IRC suggested ejabberd because “it’s one config file instead of 20″, which was more than enough to convince me, especially after listening to Matt relay all the “fun” he was having trying to get the official server software to work properly.
I found that ejabberd is available in Debian Unstable, but my server runs sarge – so I backported it along with erlang (the only unavailable dependency). The packages are available on my apt server if anyone else would like to use them (sudo apt-get install ejabberd after adding the repository).
I was able to get it up and running very quickly by following the installation instructions as well as the comments in the conf file, and was very impressed. It even has a nice web gui for administration.
My new jabber id is eric@extremeboredom.net, please update your buddy lists!
If you are reading this wondering “what the hell is jabber and why should I care”, allow me to try to explain. Jabber is an instant messaging protocol, similar to AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, etc. The difference between jabber and these other IM networks is that jabber is open, anyone has the ability to run a jabber server and communicate with people on other servers. This is contrary to the other IM networks what force you to connect to their server to talk to people on their network (you have to have an AIM account to talk to AIM users). The jabber protocol is also free, meaning anyone is able to (and encouraged to) write software that uses it.
You should use jabber if you think that communication should be free, and not controlled by large corporations such as AOL and Microsoft.
More information, including a list of clients you can use, is avaliable at http://www.imfederation.com/.
Categorized as Open Source, Technology, Open Source, Ubuntu