2 - Raspberry PI Community Projects

Since the IRC protocol is very old, many clients are available to cater for many
user groups; examples include XChat and Smuxi (graphical clients based on
GTK+), Irssi (text mode), Erc (integrated to Emacs), Chatzilla (in the Mozilla
soware suite), and so on.
QUICK LOOK
Video conferencing with
Ekiga
Ekiga (formerly GnomeMeeting) is the most prominent application for Linux
video conferencing. It is both stable and functional, and is very easily used
on a local network; seing up the service on a global network is much more
complex when the firewalls involved lack explicit support for the H323 and/or
SIP teleconferencing protocols with all their quirks.
If only one Ekiga client is to run behind the firewall, the configuration is rather
straightforward, and only involves forwarding a few ports to the dedicated
host: TCP port 1720 (listening for incoming connections), TCP port 5060 (for
SIP), TCP ports 30000 to 30010 (for control of open connections) and UDP
ports 5000 to 5013 (for audio and video data transmission and registration to
an H323 proxy).
When several Ekiga clients are to run behind the firewall, complexity increases
notably. An H323 proxy (for instance the gnugk package) must be set up, and
its configuration is far from simple.
Configuring the Server Setting up a Jabber server is rather straightforward. After installing
the ejabberd package, executing dpkg-reconfigure ejabberd will allow customizing the default
domain, and create an administrator account. Note that the Jabber server needs a valid
DNS name to point at it, so some network administration can be required beforehand. The Falcot
Corp administrators picked jabber.falcot.com for that purpose.
Once this initial set up is over, the service configuration can be controlled through a web interface
accessible at hp://jabber.falcot.com:5280/admin/. The requested username and password
are those that were given earlier during the initial configuration. Note that the username
must be qualified with the configured domain: the admin account becomes admin@jabber.
falcot.com.
The web interface removes the need to edit a configuration file, but does not always make the
task easier, since many options have a peculiar syntax that needs to be known. /usr/share/
doc/ejabberd/guide.html is therefore a recommended read.
Jabber Clients GNOME provides Empathy (in the similarly-named package), a minimalist
client that integrates in the notification area of the desktop (on the top-right corner in the default
GNOME configuration). It also supports many instant messaging protocols beyond Jabber.
KDE provides Kopete (in the package of the same name).
Chapter 13 — Workstation
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