I use mcabber and irssi for chat. Mcabber doesn't really support much in the way of features (so even on a modern XMPP server you're missing simple things like

I use mcabber and irssi for chat. Mcabber doesn't really support much in the way of features (so even on a modern XMPP server you're missing simple things like fetching history), but its vi style shortcuts and nice layout mean I can't give it up. Combined with jmp.chat I can even send text messages from it.