Instant Messaging Solutions for Linux

Gossip

Gossip is an instant messaging client designed for GNOME desktop environment. There is also a MacOS version of this application available. It supports only Jabber protocol (XMPP), but users may try to setup other ones through Jabber transports. It has a very clean, nice looking and easy to use interface, giving users the opportunity to keep in touch with their friends in a pleasant way.

In fact it looks like Gajim client having a lot of similarities with it. The only difference is that Gajim is significantly more functional and customizable. Thus Gossip’s intended audience consists of the users who like to use very simple and intuitive clients without any excessive functions.

As for the most characteristic features of Gossip, they are the following:

• Group chatting
• File transfer
• Keeping all of your conversations logged
• Sound and visual notifications of messages
• Spell checking
• Chat themes
• Presence of your contacts
• Avatars and smiles and etc.

Unfortunately developers, at least at the moment, do not even plan to implement the support of other popular protocols.

Skype

Taking into consideration the fact that Skype does not have any alternative clients, we are not going to describe it one more time, but to compare its Windows and Linux versions in order to find out the shortcomings of the last one.

Unfortunately Skype for Linux is developing much slower than the one for Windows OS (it’s understandable even if you check the latest versions: Linux — 2.0.0.72, Windows — 4.1.0.136). Thus it generally takes time for the features appeared in Windows version to be available for Linux users. However it doesn’t mean that Linux version of Skype lacks functionality. In fact it has almost all the features you may need, but there are some things which have to be improved.

Although with the appearance of Skype 2.0 version for Linux (March 2008) the video conferencing became available, at the moment this feature does not work in an appropriate way; moreover the icon of the video conferencing seems to be withdrawn for unknown reasons. Nevertheless on the Skype’s official website it’s still said that the latest Linux version supports video conferencing. Additionally many users may encounter some problems with setting up headsets.

Another disadvantage of the Linux version, which may be considered as an important one by the users who pay significant attention to the user interface, is that it’s not as customizable and attractive as the Windows one.

However in general it leaves a very decent impression possessing such important features as: audio conferencing, voicemails, call forwarding, blocking users, SkypeOut, SkypeIn and etc.