Jabber Instant Messenger client tests and comparisons

Like Gossip, Kopete is an instant messaging client dedicated to a graphical environment. Whereas Gossip is adapted to Gnome, Kopete is adapted to KDE, its direct opponent.

But the differences don’t stop here. Firstly, Kopete is not happy being just a Jabber client. It is a multi-protocol client which means it natively supports the Jabber, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AIM and IRC protocols. And this is one of the rare programs that support webcams on both the MSN and Yahoo networks!

Add to this support for smileys, pictures, presentation styles for the chat window, grouping of windows via tabs, and message encryption, and you have Kopete 0.12 that is on fire!

This new version also offers experimental support for voice over IP thanks to libjingle.


In conclusion, we suggest this program if you are using the KDE desktop, particularly if you want to use webcams with your friends that are connected to the MSN or Yahoo networks. Nevertheless, it is disappointing that a program of this quality is limited to a single operating system and is taking a long time to integrate graphic libraries specific to KDE.

Due to the success of this official KDE messaging client, we can only hope that they are looking to transport it to other platforms, or rewrite it with a “graphical interface” that can be used in other environments like KDE Cygwin (for Windows) or KDE FreeBSD.