Gajim is an
instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
client
Client(s) or The Client may refer to:
* Client (business)
* Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer
* Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuabl ...
for the
XMPP
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), ...
protocol which uses the
GTK toolkit. The name Gajim is a
recursive acronym
A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hof ...
for ''Gajim's a jabber instant messenger''. Gajim runs on
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
,
BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Be ...
,
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
, and
Microsoft Windows. Released under the
GPL-3.0-only license, Gajim is
free software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, ...
. A 2009 round-up of similar software on
Tom's Hardware
''Tom's Hardware'' is an online publication owned by Future plc and focused on technology. It was founded in 1996 by Thomas Pabst. It provides articles, news, price comparisons, videos and reviews on computer hardware and high technology. The si ...
found version 0.12.1 "the lightest and fastest jabber IM client".
Features

Gajim aims to be an easy to use and fully-featured XMPP client. Gajim uses
PyGTK as GUI library, which makes it cross-platform compatible. Some of its features:
* Group chat support (with MUC protocol)
* Emojis, Avatars, File transfer
* Systray icon, Spell checking
*
TLS,
OpenPGP
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partiti ...
and end-to-end encryption support (OpenPGP not available under
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
until version 0.15),
* Transport Registration support
* Service Discovery including Nodes
* Wikipedia, dictionary and search engine lookup
* Multiple accounts support
*
D-Bus
In computing, D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus")
is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, ...
Capabilities
*
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. ...
Console
*
Jingle
A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually ...
voice and video support (using the "python-farstream" library, no support in Windows yet)
*
OMEMO
OMEMO is an extension to the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for multi-client end-to-end encryption developed by Andreas Straub. According to Straub, OMEMO uses the Double Ratchet Algorithm "to provide multi-end to multi-end enc ...
* HTTP file upload
Gajim is available in Basque, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, English, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Russian, Spanish, Slovak, Swedish, Ukrainian and others.
Third-party plugins
Gajim supports third-party plugins. Examples include:
* Gajim-OMEMO, adding support for
OMEMO
OMEMO is an extension to the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for multi-client end-to-end encryption developed by Andreas Straub. According to Straub, OMEMO uses the Double Ratchet Algorithm "to provide multi-end to multi-end enc ...
.
See also
*
Comparison of instant messaging clients
The landscape for instant messaging involves cross-platform instant messaging clients that can handle one or multiple protocols. Clients that use the same protocol can typically federate and talk to one another. The following table compares gener ...
References
Reviews
* Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeie
Review: Gajim Jabber clienton
Linux.com
Linux.com is a website owned by the Linux Foundation. The goal of the site is to provide information about the developments and changes in Linux and related products. Linux.com offers free Linux tutorials, news and blogs, discussion forums and ...
, September 16, 2005
* Mihai Marinof
Gajim Review. Free Jabber client for Linux.on
Softpedia
Softpedia is a software and tech news website based in Romania. It indexes, reviews and hosts various downloadable software and reports news on technology and science topics.
Website
Softpedia hosts reviews written by its staff—each review in ...
, 7 November 2006
External links
*
Official wiki* Unofficia
XMPP/Jabber clients and OS usage statistics (5)b
Lucas Nussbaum
{{Instant messaging
Free instant messaging clients
Free XMPP clients
Instant messaging clients that use GTK
Software that uses PyGTK
Windows instant messaging clients
Free software programmed in Python
Applications using D-Bus