Jitsi Desktop

This is the only instant messenger, that offers all of the following features:

• XMPP support.
• Jingle video- and audio communication.
• OTR end-to-end encryption.
• ZRTP end-to-end video and audio stream encryption!!
• Compatibility with pretty much every OS out there, since it’s based on Java.
• Open source.
• Free.

I have tried many many clients. They all fail at one if not most of these features.

• Most will lock you into their network, making it impossible to chat with people on other servers. Imagine you couldn’t send a mail from Hotmail to Gmail, but only to Yahoo. That’s what they are doing here!
• Many are closed-source, making all the encryption utterly pointless, as you can’t check the program itself in the first place.
• Encryption is not end-to-end, and every evil intelligence agency or business that pays the maker enough money can play man in the middle, impersonate you, put viruses on your system, etc.
• Not a single one offers actual video/audio encryption. Except Jitsi. So there’s not really an alternative.
• Many won’t do video or audio communication at all.
• The majority of them can’t run on anything but Windows and maybe some locked-down mobile toy operating systems. If you do professional work and need a professional OS, they leave you out in the cold.
• And then many want real actual money … for mere worthless copies. That’s like paying somebody with copied bills. That’s not worth anything since there’s no actual work behind the copy. It’s ripping people off. It’s illegal for that exact reason. (Proper financing for software projects is done via crowdfunding the implementation of features!)

Skype and WhatsApp are prominent Examples. They should be avoided under all circumstances, since their whole “encryption” is fake. All they do, is use obfuscation disguised as encryption, to their servers, and that’s it. Anyone can hack that. It’s pointless.

Additionally, Jitsi supports rather unique and rare features:

• Video bridging
• Video conferencing up to 32 users (and more in the next version)
• Provisioning. (An admin can set things up for a whole company, and avoid manually doing it for each system.)
• SIP support. (If you prefer that over XMPP for some reason…)
• Screen sharing
• Raw packet logging
• Call recording
• Use of external contact lists. (E.g. via LDAP)
• Videos and Images from over a dozen big sites right in the chat window.

And now the negative sides, so this doesn’t sound like an ad. :)

• There being no alternative has the downside that you’ll rarely find some other user who can do all that too, without also installing Jitsi. (But Pidgin is promising.)
• To achieve full XMPP+OTR and Jingle+ZRTP won’t be as easy as playing with colorful clickables, of course. It’s not supposed to be. Any further simplification would result in the loss of essential functionality. (But it’s not hard either. All it takes is to not be lazy.)
• There’s no Android version (and no iOS one, but nobody cares). There will be one with Jitsi 3.0 this summer though. I hope…
• Being that featureful and made in Java, it’s a bit slow to start up and sometimes a big buggy. To be frank, since it’s the only one that ever fully works at all, I can live with that. Besides, that too is supposed to be resolved soon, since 3.0 will apparently be a complete rewrite.
• Can’t handle dark/reverse color schemes under Linux. You get light text on light background, and it may be unreadable. No problem with other schemes though. (I recommend forcing Java to a certain scheme in general.)

([Edited by Evi1M4chine_, March 12] Lists didn’t work; Also mentioned Pidgin; Some typos)

SIP, OTR, screen sharing, file transfer... all what one could need. Problem: Nothing is working at all. Also the UI looks kinda childish.