Bits from the Debian XMPP Team

XMPP/Jabber Debian 13 Trixie News

2025-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Debian 13 "Trixie" full freeze has started 2025-05-17, so this is a good time to take a look at some of the features, that this release will bring. Here we will focus on packages related to XMPP, a.k.a. Jabber.

XMPP is a universal communication protocol for instant messaging, push notifications, IoT, WebRTC, and social applications. It has existed since 1999, originally called "Jabber", it has a diverse and active developers community.

Clients

Dino, a modern XMPP client has been upgraded from 0.4.2 to 0.5.0
Dino now uses OMEMO encryption by default. It also supports XEP-0447: Stateless File Sharing for unencrypted file transfers. Users can now see preview images or other file details before downloading the file. Multiple widgets are redesigned to be compatible with mobile devices, e.g. running Mobian.
Gajim, a GTK+-based Jabber client has been upgraded from 1.7.3 to 2.1.1
There are many new features in Gajim, e.g. XEP-0444: Message Reactions, XEP-0461: Message Replies, XEP-0425: Moderated Message Retraction, XEP-0490: Message Displayed Synchronization, voice message recording, migration to GTK 4, and a lot of UI changes.
go-sendxmpp, a CLI tool to send messages to contacts or MUCs: 0.5.6 → 0.14.1
New features are support for sending XEP-0066: Out of Band Data and support for several modern authentication features (XEP-0388: Extensible SASL Profile, XEP-0386: Bind 2, XEP-0484: Fast Authentication Streamlining Tokens). New support of modern SCRAM mechanisms (SCRAM-SHA-1(-PLUS), SCRAM-SHA-256(-PLUS), SCRAM-SHA-515(-PLUS)) and SASL SCRAM Downgrade Protection (XEP-0474: SASL SCRAM Downgrade Protection) improve the security of the login process. Also a lot of bugfixes and smaller improvements found their way to the new version, for details see the changelog.
Kaidan, a simple and user-friendly Jabber/XMPP client is upgraded from 0.8.0 to 0.12.2
Kaidan supports end-to-end encryption via OMEMO 2, Automatic Trust Management and XMPP Providers. It has been migrated to QT 6 and many features have been added: XEP-0444: Message Reactions, XEP-0461: Message Replies, chat pinning, inline audio player, chat list filtering, local message removal, etc.
Libervia is upgraded from 0.9.0~hg3993 to 0.9.0~hg4352
Among other features, it now also contains a gateway to ActivityPub, e.g. to Mastodon.
Poezio, a console based XMPP client as been updated from 0.14 to 0.15.0
Better self-ping support. Use the system CA store by default.
Profanity, a console based XMPP client has been upgraded from 0.13.1 to 0.15.0.
Add support for XEP-0054: vcard-temp, Improve MAM support, show encryption for messages from history and handle alt+enter as newline char.
Psi+, a QT based XMPP client (basic version) has been upgraded from 1.4.554 to 1.4.1456
xmpp-dns, a CLI tool to check XMPP SRV records: 0.3.4 → 0.4.5
It now supports showing connection targets defined by XEP-0156: Discovering Alternative XMPP Connection Methods/XEP-0487: Host Meta 2 - One Method To Rule Them All and testing of XEP-0206: XMPP Over BOSH and Websocket connections. A detailed list of changes can be found in the changelog.

Servers

ejabberd, an extensible realtime platform (XMPP server, MQTT broker, SIP service) has been updated from Version 23.01 to 24.12
Add support for XEP-0425: Moderated Message Retraction, XEP-0402: PEP Native Bookmarks, and XEP-0424 Message Retraction.
Prosŏdy, a lightweight extensible XMPP server has been upgraded from 0.12.3 to 13.0.1
Admins can disable and enable accounts as needed. A new role and permissions framework. Storage and performance improvements.

Libraries

libomemo-c 0.5.0 to 0.5.1
libstrophe, an XMPP library in C has been upgraded from 0.12.2 to 0.14.0
It now supports XEP-0138: Stream Compression and adds various modern SCRAM mechanisms.
omemo-dr, an OMEMO library used by Gajim is now in Debian, in version 1.0.1
python-nbxmpp, a non blocking Jabber/XMPP Python 3 library, upgrade from 4.2.2 to 6.1.1
python-oldmemo, a python-omemo backend for OMEMO 1, 1.0.3 to 1.1.0
python-omemo, a Python 3 implementation of the OMEMO protocol, 1.0.2 to 1.2.0
python-twomemo, a python-omemo backend for OMEMO 2, 1.0.3 to 1.1.0
qxmpp 1.4.0 to 1.10.3
slixmpp-omemo new 1.2.2
slixmpp 1.8.3 to 1.10.0
strophejs, a library for writing XMPP clients has been upgraded from 1.2.14 to 3.1.0

Gateways/Transports

Biboumi, a gateway between XMPP and IRC, upgrades from 9.0 to 9.0+20241124.
Debian 13 Trixie includes Slidge 0.2.12 and Matridge 0.2.3 for the first time! It is a gateway between XMPP and Matrix, with support for many chat features.

Not in Trixie

Spectrum 2, a gateway from XMPP to various other messaging systems, did not make it into Debian 13, because it depends on Swift, which has release critical bugs and therefore cannot be part of a stable release.

XMPP What's new in Debian 12 bookworm

2023-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

On 2021-07-13 there was a blog post of new XMPP related software releases which have been uploaded to Debian 11 (bullseye). Today, we will inform you about updates for the upcoming Debian release bookworm.

A lot of new releases have been provided by the upstream projects. There were lot of changes to the XMPP clients like Dino, Gajim, Profanity, Poezio and others. Also the XMPP servers have been enhanced.

Unfortunately, we can not provide a list of all the changes which have been done, but will try to highlight some of the changes and new features.

BTW, feel free to join the Debian User Support on Jabber at xmpp:debian@conference.debian.org?join.

You can find a list of 58 packages of the Debian XMPP team on the XMPP QA Page.

Dino, modern XMPP client has been upgraded from 0.2.0 to 0.4.0. The new version supports encrypted calls and group calls and reactions give you a way to respond to a message with an emoji. You can find more information about Dino 0.3.0 and Dino 0.4.0 in the release notes of the upstream project. Dino is using GTK4 / libadwaita which provides widgets for mobile-friendly UIs. Changes has been done on the main view of Dino.
Gajim, a GTK+-based Jabber client has been upgraded from 1.3.1 to 1.7.1. Since 1.4 Gajim has got a new UI, which supports spaces. 1.5.2 supports a content viewer for PEP nodes. 1.6.0 is using libsoup3 and python 3.10. Audio preview looks a lot nicer with a wave graph visualization and profile images (avatar) are not limited to only JPG anymore. The plugins gajim-appindicatorintegration, gajim-plugininstaller, gajim-syntaxhighlight und gajim-urlimagepreview are obsolete, these features has been moved to gajim. There were a lot of releases in Gajim. You can find the full story at https://gajim.org/post/
Profanity, the console based XMPP client has been upgraded from 0.10.0 to 0.13.1. Profanity supports XEP-0377 Spam Reporting, and XEP-0157 server contact information discovery. It now marks a window with an attention flag, updated HTTP Upload XEP-0363, and messages can be composed with an external editor. It also features easy quoting, in-band account registration (XEP-0077), Print OMEMO verification QR code, and many more.
Kaidan, a simple and user-friendly Jabber/XMPP client based on Qt has been updated from 0.7.0 to 0.8.0. The new release supports XEP-0085: Chat State Notifications and XEP-0313: Message Archive Management.
Poezio, a console-based XMPP client as been updated from 0.13.1 to 0.14. Poezio is now under GPLv3+. The new release supports request for voice and the /join command support using an XMPP URI. More information at https://lab.louiz.org/poezio/poezio/-/raw/v0.14/CHANGELOG.
Swift, back in Debian is the Swift XMPP client - a cross-platform Client written in C++. In 2015 the client was removed from testing and is back with version 5.0.

Server

prosody the lightweight extensible XMPP server has been upgraded from 0.11.9 to 0.12.2. Mobile and connectivity optimizations, a new module for HTTP file sharing, audio/video calling support. See the release announcement for more info. You will also find a lot of new modules which have been added to 0.12.0. The version 0.12.3 is waiting migration from unstable to testing.
ejabberd, extensible realtime platform (XMPP server + MQTT broker + SIP service) has been updated from Version 21.01 to 23.01. The new version supports the latest version of MIX (XEP-0369). There were also changes for SQL and MUC. See the release information for 22.10 and 23.01 for more details.

Libs

libstrophe, xmpp C lib has been upgraded from 0.10.1 to 0.12.2. The lib has SASL EXTERNAL support (XEP-0178), support for manual certificate verification and Stream Management support (XEP-0198).
python-nbxmpp 2.0.2 to 4.2.0 - used by gajim
qxmpp 1.3.2 to 1.4.0
slixmpp 1.7.0 to 1.8.3 (see https://lab.louiz.org/poezio/slixmpp/-/tags/slix-1.8.0)
loudmouth 1.5.3 to 1.5.4
libomemo-c, new in Debian with version 0.5.0 - a fork of libsignal-protocol-c

Others

There were some changes of the Libervia, formerly known as Salut à Toi (SaT) packages in Debian. The most visible change is, that Salut à Toi has been renamed to libervia:
salutatoi is now libervia-backend (0.9.0)
sat-xmpp-primitivus is now libervia-tui
sat-xmpp-core is now libervia-backend
sat-xmpp-jp is now libervia-cli
sat-pubsub is now libervia-pubsub (0.4.0)
gsasl has been updated from 1.10.0 to 2.2.0
libxeddsa 2.0.0 is new in Debian - toolkit around Curve25519 and Ed25519 key pairs

Happy chatting - keep in touch with your family and friends via Jabber / XMPP - XMPP is an open standard of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for instant messaging.

XMPP Novelties in Debian 11 Bullseye

2021-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

This is not only the Year of the Ox, but also the year of Debian 11, code-named bullseye. The release lies ahead, full freeze starts this week. A good opportunity to take a look at what is new in bullseye. In this post new programs and new software versions related to XMPP, also known as Jabber are presented. XMPP exists since 1999, and has a diverse and active developers community. It is a universal communication protocol, used for instant messaging, IoT, WebRTC, and social applications. You probably will encounter some oxen in this post.

biboumi, XMPP gateway to connect to IRC servers: 8.3 → 9.0
The biggest change for users is SASL support: A new field in the Configure ad-hoc command lets you set a password that will be used to authenticate to the nick service, instead of using the cumbersome NickServ method.
Many more changes are listed in the changelog.
Dino, modern XMPP client: 0.0.git20181129 → 0.2.0
Dino in Debian 10 was practically a technology preview. In Debian 11 it is already a fully usable client, supporting OMEMO encryption, file upload, image preview, message correction and many more features in a clean and beautiful user interface.
ejabberd, the extensible realtime platform: 18.12.1 → 21.01.
Probably the most important improvement for end-users is XEP-0215 support to facilitate modern WebRTC-style audio/video calls. ejabberd also integrates more nicely with systemd (e.g., the watchdog feature if supported, now). Apart from that, a new configuration validator was introduced, which brings a more flexible (but mostly backwards-compatible) syntax. Also, error reporting in case of misconfiguration should be way more helpful, now. As a new authentication backend, JSON Web Tokens (JWT) can be used. In addition to the XMPP and SIP support, ejabberd now includes a full-blown MQTT server. A large number of smaller features has been added, performance was improved in many ways, and several bugs were fixed. See the long list of changes.
Gajim, a GTK+-based Jabber client: 1.1.2 → 1.3.1
The new Debian release brings many improvements. Gajim’s network code has been completely rewritten, which leads to faster connections, better recovery from network loss, and less network related hiccups. Customizing Gajim is now easier than ever. Thanks to the new settings backend and a completely reworked Preferences window, you can adapt Gajim to your needs in just a few seconds.
Good for newcomers: account creation is now a lot easier with Gajim’s new assistant. The new Profile window gives you many options to tell people more about yourself. You can now easily crop your own profile picture before updating it.
Group chats actions have been reorganized. It’s now easier to send invitations or change your nickname for example. Gajim also received support for chat markers, which enables you to see how far your contact followed the conversation. But this is by far not everything the new release brings. There are many new and helpful features, such as pasting images from your clipboard directly into the chat or playing voice messages directly from the chat window.
Read more about the new Gajim release in Debian 11 here.
Furthermore, three more Gajim plugins are now in Debian: gajim-lengthnotifier, gajim-openpgp for OX 🐂 (XEP-0373: OpenPGP for XMPP) and gajim-syntaxhighlight.
NEW Kaidan Simple and user-friendly Jabber/XMPP client 0.7.0
Kaidan is a simple, user-friendly and modern XMPP chat client. The user interface makes use of Kirigami and QtQuick, while the back-end of Kaidan is entirely written in C++ using Qt and the Qt-based XMPP library QXmpp. Kaidan runs on mobile and desktop systems including Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, Plasma Mobile and Ubuntu Touch.
mcabber, small Jabber (XMPP) console client: 1.1.0 → 1.1.2
A theme for 256 color terminals is now included, the handling of carbon message copies has been improved, and various minor issues have been fixed.
Poezio, Console-based XMPP client: 0.12.1 → 0.13.1
This new release brings many improvements, such as Message Archive (XEP-0313) support, initial support for OMEMO (XEP-0384) through a plugin, HTTP File Upload support, Consitent Color Generation (XEP-0392), and plenty of internal changes and bug fixes. Not all changes in 0.13 and 0.13.1 can be listed, see the CHANGELOG for a more extensive summary.
Profanity, the console based XMPP client: 0.6.0 → 0.10.0
We can not list all changes which have been done, but here are some highlights.
Support of OMEMO Encryption (XEP-0384). Consistent Color Generation (XEP-0392), be aware of the changes in the command to standardize the names of commands. A clipboard feature has been added. Highlight unread messages with a different color in /wins. Keyboard switch to select the next window with unread messages with alt + a. Support for Last Message Correction (XEP-0308), Allow UTF-8 symbols as OMEMO/OTR/PGP indicator char. Add option to open avatars directly (XEP-0084). Add option to define a theme at startup and some changes to improve themes. Add possibility to easily open URLs. Add experimental OX 🐂 (XEP-0373, XEP-0374) support. Add OMEMO media sharing support, ...
There is also a Profanity light package in Debian now, the best option for systems with tight limits on resources.
Prosody, the lightweight extensible XMPP server: 0.11.2 → 0.11.9
Upgrading to the latest stable release of Prosody brings a whole load of improvements in the stability, usability and performance departments. It especially improves the performance of websockets, and PEP performance for users with many contacts. It includes interoperability improvements for a range of clients.
prosody-modules, community modules and extensions for Prosody: 0.0~hg20190203 → 0.0~hg20210130
The ever-growing collection of goodies to plug into Prosody has a number of exciting additions, including a suite of modules to handle invite-based account registration, and others for moderating messages in group chats (e.g. for removal of spam/abuse), server-to-server federation over Tor and client authentication using certificates. Many existing community modules received updates as well.
Psi, Qt-based XMPP client: 1.3 → 1.5
The new version contains important bug fixes.
salutatoi, multi-frontends, multi-purposes communication tool: 0.7.0a4 → 0.8.0~hg3453
This version is now fully running on Python 3, and has full OMEMO support (one2one, groups and files). The CLI frontend (jp) has among new commands a "jp file get" one which is comparable to wget with OMEMO support. A file sharing component is included, with HTTP Upload and Jingle support. For a list of other improvements, please consult the changelog.
Note, that the upstream project has been renamed to "Libervia".
NEW sms4you, Personal gateway connecting SMS to XMPP or email 0.0.7
It runs with a GSM device over ModemManager and uses a lightweight XMPP server or a single email account to handle communication in both directions.
NEW xmppc, XMPP Command Line Client 0.1.0
xmppc is a new command line tool for XMPP. It supports some basic features of XMPP (request your roster, bookmarks, OMEMO Devices and fingerprints). You can send messages with both legacy PGP (XEP-0027) and the new OX 🐂 (XEP-0373: OpenPGP for XMPP).

That's all for now. Enjoy Debian 11 bullseye and Happy Chatting!

New Dino in Debian

2019-10-13T22:00:00+00:00

Dino (dino-im in Debian), the modern and beautiful chat client for the desktop, has some nice, new features. Users of Debian testing (bullseye) might like to try them:

XEP-0391: Jingle Encrypted Transports (explained here)
XEP-0402: Bookmarks 2 (explained here)

Note, that users of Dino on Debian 10 (buster) should upgrade to version 0.0.git20181129-1+deb10u1, because of a number of security issues, that have been found (CVE-2019-16235, CVE-2019-16236, CVE-2019-16237).

There have been other XMPP related updates in Debian since release of buster, among them:

Ejabberd 19.08-2
Gajim 1.1.3-2 and Gajim OMEMO 2.6.29-1 plugin
Profanity 0.7.1, now with OMEMO encryption support!

You might be interested in the Octobers XMPP newsletter, also available in German.

Debian XMPP Team Starts a Blog

2019-05-17T23:30:00+00:00

The Debian XMPP Team, the people who package Dino, Gajim, Mcabber, Movim, Profanity, Prosody, Psi+, Salut à Toi, Taningia, and a couple of other packages related to XMPP a.k.a. Jabber for Debian, have this blog now. We will try to post interesting stuff here — when it's ready!