14 ms·

Dino: An open-source application for XMPP messaging

270 points by larma 7y ago

sequoia 7y ago
Is this a client or is Dino also running a chat server/issuing accounts etc? I used to use pidgin/adium/finch back when google & facebook supported XMPP, but I'm not sure what I'd do with a client now. Crucially: If I have Dino, can I chat with any of my friends? Or do I need to persuade them to install Dino & create an account somewhere first?
- boudin 7y ago
  Dino is a xmpp client, so no server. You have to create an account on a xmpp server to use it, which you can do on a public server or you can install your own server otherwise. Your friends needs a xmpp account somewhere (not required to be on the same domain) and can use any xmpp client to chat with you.
- vertex-four 7y ago
  There’s a good many public XMPP servers, or you could run one for yourself and your friends (I recommend Prosody, it works pretty much out of the box for that use case). If they have any XMPP client on any server, you can talk to them.
Zash 7y ago
Congratulations on the long-awaited first release!
ppjet6 7y ago
Congrats!
Leace 7y ago
I'm using Dino daily and it works well and looks modern. It still has minor issues here and there but it's finally a desktop client I can recommend to my non-technical friends. One question though: is Windows version planned?
- larma 7y ago
  Planned as in wanted: yes. Planned as in having it as a roadmap item: no, there is no roadmap :) It's definitely something that is now becoming more relevant after the first release.
  - kawfey 7y ago
    I'm not a linux hater, but as long as it's in linux-land, there won't be much mass adoption. Not necessarily a bad thing, but might as well named it YAXC and tossed it into the list[0] (oh turns out Dino is on the list and there's already something called YAXIM) [0]https://xmpp.org/software/clients.html https://xmpp.org/software/clients.html
    - kick 7y ago
      What's the point in this comment? What good do you possibly think could have came from saying that? Not only are you pointing out something that they have already considered, you're pointing it out in an arrogant way, right after they say that they had already considered it and wanted something that would render your comment void, and on top of that, you end it with insulting the project. I'm genuinely fascinated: what was your mindset when posting this?
      - zapzupnz 7y ago
        I'm actually more interested in an explication for the mindset behind this comment's condescending tone. It's a fair enough comment to make — the notion that mass adoption comes by catering to the masses is not one that should be so readily dismissed with a downvote and aggressive italicisation. In a discussion of an XMPP client that's specifically designed for mass appeal, in this modern world of iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, and Discord, it's a perfectly reasonable point to bring up.
22byebye 7y ago
Dino, meet Deno.
Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
Congrats on release, but the title is incorrect, word 'decentralized' should be removed. XMPP, like email, is not a 'decentralized' protocol, but a federated one. If you and your chat partners use the same server, it would be as centralized as WhatsApp or Signal.
- larma 7y ago
  I think you are confusing terms here, what you mean is distributed, which is only a subset of decentralized. Federated is also decentralized. See for example https://medium.com/distributed-economy/what-is-the-difference-between-decentralized-and-distributed-systems-f4190a5c6462 https://medium.com/distributed-economy/what-is-the-differenc... Beside that, Dino does support peer-to-peer file transfers using Jingle.
- ryukafalz 7y ago
  Federated protocols are decentralized, though; there's no central point of control. This graphic has been done to death at this point but it's relevant here: https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/centralized_decentralized_distributed.png https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/c...
  - Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
    Baran drew this pic almost 80 years ago. Since then, 'Decentralized' has become an umbrella term for both decentralized and distributed networks, and 'Federated' is currently a commonly accepted name for Email/XMPP type of networks. [1] This makes sense, because Baran was describing a communication network, like later ethernet, where nodes were interchangeable, wherever in XMPP the nodes are not interchangeable: if you have an account on xmpp.org server, you can't connect to xmpp.jp server and receive your messages. Thus, such networks required a special more narrow name to define it. [1] https://networkcultures.org/unlikeus/resources/articles/what-is-a-federated-network/ https://networkcultures.org/unlikeus/resources/articles/what...
- joecool1029 7y ago
  > Congrats on release, but the title is incorrect, word 'decentralized' should be removed. It is decentralized in theory (no one server controls the network), but 'federated' is the correct word to use here. When I saw the title I was assuming this was some cool new sort of client that created and managed a bunch of logins/identities as one on various XMPP servers and used something like OMEMO for key management on top of that 'layer'. Tox is a better example of a 'decentralized' protocol.
travbrack 7y ago
Glad there's a modern alternative to big tech's walled chat gardens. It's tragic that this protocol has so much potential but the "last mile" of getting it out to users has prevented success since FB and Google ditched it.
- sneak 7y ago
  They ditched it because of inbound spam and because almost no one used it.
maximp 7y ago
Not to be confused with Deno, the secure JS runtime from the creator of Node: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22102656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22102656
theamk 7y ago
Does this support offline messages and a history shared between devices? Lack of these features in XMPP was why my company moved to slack.
- SamWhited 7y ago
  These are both supported by XMPP and are wide spread among servers. They are also supported by Dino.
komcinity 7y ago
Are mobile versions in the pipeline?
komcinity 7y ago
Are mobile version in the pipeline?
- rahimnathwani 7y ago
  For mobile, there's already 'Conversations': https://github.com/siacs/Conversations https://github.com/siacs/Conversations
- larma 7y ago
  We are aiming for support for the Librem 5 and other smartphones that use a more GNU/Linux-ish environment. For Android there is conversations.im with a similar feature set.
jandrese 7y ago
Does this finally get away from the problem that XMPP had in the old days, where the usage model was tightly bound to the domain model, so each domain would have one and only one XMPP server (plus possibly a fallback) and if you aren't the domain administrator then you can pound sand? It was pretty much impossible to run your own server for fun unless you registered a domain or two because of the serious business logic baked into the design of the protocol. Ages ago when I was working on a replacement for IRC for an organization that needed to decentralize its servers because they had a lot of users spread across the world behind iffy internet uplinks but all on the same domain this was a huge headache. The old IRC system worked really well for them, but some of the higher ups were upset because it wasn't "enterprise quality" and thus shouldn't be on their network.
- SamWhited 7y ago
  That sounds like a server design problem, not a client problem. XMPP is stateful, so it is harder to have a distributed server but it's also doing something more complicated than eg. serving a document like HTTP. If you use a server like ejabberd and a proxy layer you can easily do geographic distribution of the server, or at least, with no more difficulty than any other protocol.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    It bled over into clients too. You would tell your client to connect to "google.com" and it was hardcoded to connect to "xmpp.google.com", with no option to choose a different server. If you had multiple domains that you wanted to connect the servers would also default to xmpp.other.domain. If you wanted to connect to test.my.domain to test2.my.domain you were SOL. In a lab environment you could hack it with local DNS fuckery, but to actually deploy it would have been a nightmare. The whole thing assumed the entire domain would be served by one single server and all clients would always have good connectivity. Their old IRC model was just to have a local server at each site with a cache. When the network went down (which it did frequently), the local users would still have connectivity, and when the link came back up they would get the backscroll. Replicating this sort of config with XMPP turned out to be very difficult, and eventually the bosses relented and let them keep IRC, or at least they passed the problem off to someone else after I left.
linuxdude314 7y ago
What is the purpose of this? It seems more like a pet project than a serious release considering there's no roadmap. What is your motivation? Surely you're aware of the abundant amount of XMPP client applications that have existed for the better part of the last 20 years?
- larma 7y ago
  There is a section on motivation in the blog post (it literally has "Motivation" in the title): > A number of clients already exist for the XMPP protocol, however Dino sets a different focus. Existing clients target tech-savvy power users. The XMPP ecosystem lacks a client that is enjoyable to use while providing the features people expect from a modern chat application. Dino fills that gap by aiming to be secure and privacy-friendly while at the same time providing a great user experience.
  - asnyder 7y ago
    http://pidgin.im http://pidgin.im seems to be pretty easy. Doesn't require any tech-savvyness other than entering your credentials in a nice, intuitive interface, unless I'm missing something?
    - johnmarcus 7y ago
      Encryption. You are missing encryption.
    - seba_dos1 7y ago
      Pidgin is a very bad XMPP client these days - at least until you have spent quite a lot of time on gathering and configuring all the plugins needed for modern XMPP experience.
    - julian-klode 7y ago
      Pidgin works fine if you use one device. If you have multiple devices or want to receive messages while you're offline, it does not support that.
exabrial 7y ago
Man, I need an XMPP client that does what slack does: group chats with the chat topics organized on the left side along with message history and status notifications.
- xorcist 7y ago
  Perhaps not the answer you are looking for, but if you can bridge XMPP groups to IRC (for example with Biboumi) then The Lounge (thelounge.chat) is a great Slack-like IRC client.
- rakoo 7y ago
  I heard kaiwa (http://getkaiwa.com/ http://getkaiwa.com/) is good, and it has this now standard Slack-like UI. Never used it though so I can't personally vouch for it.
  - exabrial 7y ago
    I've seen that but development seem to have died for a 5 years ago unfortunately :/ it looked very promising
asnyder 7y ago
Looks like a nice project, but why wouldn't one use http://pidgin.im http://pidgin.im, which also supports XMPP and as far as I know is pretty solid, works well, and is also cross-platform? What advantages does this have over Pidgin?
- als0 7y ago
  The enormous selection of Pidgin plugins (e.g. Discord, Office365, IRC, etc) also makes it really hard for me to give it up for a prettier program like Dino. I hope Dino supports at least OTR encryption.
  - upofadown 7y ago
    That sounds unlikely. Now that OMEMO is the hotness the interest in OTR has dropped pretty much to zero in the XMPP world. The Conversations client used to support OTR but that support has been discontinued.
- drewcoo 7y ago
  I had the same question. This seemed to be their answer: > A number of clients already exist for the XMPP protocol, however Dino sets a different focus. Existing clients target tech-savvy power users. The XMPP ecosystem lacks a client that is enjoyable to use while providing the features people expect from a modern chat application.
  - asnyder 7y ago
    I'm sure one needs to be more tech-savvy to use Dino than to use Pidgin :), but I understand they were likely not thinking about Pidgin, but it does exist.
    - ppjet6 7y ago
      fwiw Pidgin is the cause of many rants in the XMPP "inner circles" since the adoption of new feature is close to 0.
- 7y ago
flatiron 7y ago
Does it do OTR?
- larma 7y ago
  No. OTR was not considered due to its lack of multi device support. OTRv4 now supports multi device, so it could be an additional option once it becomes standardized for XMPP. We are also monitoring development around MLS.
- craftyguy 7y ago
  The article says it supports OMEMO which, IMHO, is superior to OTR in many ways.
daryltucker 7y ago
Dino is slim and has some decent features, but Gajim is the client you want to be using today. Gajim has (although mostly broken) Voice and Video support as well as (working) plugin support and various plugins that you may expect. Dino really fell short for me in my needs for XMPP client, though I'm happy to see federated systems and their clients being promoted. Specifically Dino has issues with OMEMO support with Conversations, while Gajim does not see these issues. This means I can use Gajim on my computer and Conversations on my phone without issues.
- ppjet6 7y ago
  Maybe the OMEMO issues you're talking about are worth reporting?
- larma 7y ago
  We fixed some issues with OMEMO in the last months, so if your experience is a little bit older, those might be fixed already. If not, please report. Dino has a very limited plugin system, extending it is planned for future releases. We are also interested in adding support for A/V calling and we already have some pieces of code for it, though nothing in a quality for actual usage.
- summersprite7 7y ago
  > you want to be using Not everyone has to use the same thing. As you said: Gajim does lots and lots of things, some of it only half-works. Gajim might be good for some people, but confusing for others. I probably wouldn't recommend it to my mom. Dino has a good feature set and the user interface feels nice. It doesn't do everything, but that can also be a positive thing. Dino's OMEMO works fine for me.
- fisle 7y ago
  What issues did you have? I used Dino and Conversations for six months or so a year ago, and enjoyed the experience. Our conversations were all OMEMO encrypted.
- julian-klode 7y ago
  Gajim's an unstable mess that half of the time is not even connected to the server because it did not manage to reconnect after resume, or it just crashes. It is fairly useless on dark theme, rendering grey on grey for the backlog. Apart from a missing status notifier / appindicator, gajim is miles ahead.
nightbrawler 7y ago
Used to communicate with a bunch of friends via AIM, then Google Talk (XMPP), then Yahoo IM... we gave up after the last one shutdown. What's the goto XMPP service these days?
- ppjet6 7y ago
  I've been prosody for about 10 years now and I've always been happy with it. You can get it at https://prosody.im https://prosody.im, and if necessary there's a good tutorial at https://homebrewserver.club/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server.html https://homebrewserver.club/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server... EDIT: I might have misunderstood "service" thinking you wanted to self-host.
- upofadown 7y ago
  Dunno. I think you just pick a server you like and use that: * https://list.jabber.at/ https://list.jabber.at/
- Boulth 7y ago
  If you don't want to self host I'd recommend https://account.conversations.im/ https://account.conversations.im/ it's paid but properly maintained to have all extensions for modern experience. If you don't want to pay just pick something with good grades from https://compliance.conversations.im/old/ https://compliance.conversations.im/old/
drcross 7y ago
Slightly off topic but I've never had success with self hosted prosody and the "conversations" app being able to share photos/memes as one would in WhatsApp or telegram. This is the one thing keeping me from being able to sell my non-tech friends on it, has anyone had any luck in this regard?
- seba_dos1 7y ago
  I'm using it with self-hosted ejabberd and have no issues. It just works.
  - duckMuppet 7y ago
    That's a standard module included in ejabberd. It may not be enabled by default in others, such as prosody
- upofadown 7y ago
  Enable the "http_upload" module if you have not yet done so.
rakoo 7y ago
While I've been a believer of XMPP and still believes it has a place, I have to admit that it doesn't have the appeal it once has. Now the IM protocol du jour is Matrix, which might or might not know the same fate; who knows. And another one might come later, and there are already others today that exist and are widely used. I think it's high time we had a concerted effort to have one great UI (probably per platform), and allow all protocol enthusiasts implement the specifics of their own choosing. It's fair to say that at this point the requirements for a "modern" UI are known, and while not all protocols may be up to the task, a very high percentage can be implemented in the most famous ones.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  I feel like the focus of XMPP puts the effort in the wrong place. FreeNode IRC is still used because community effort to maintain the channels. Similarly, subreddits live or die by community moderation. An effort that simplifies channel maintenance, like how easy it is to open a new Subreddit (the #1 portal, a static website URL representing your community identity) is the most important step forward. Once you establish a www identity for your community, then and only then can you discuss community chat. For example, lobster.rs community meets on IRC FreeNode, a protocol established on their about page. ------ The reason Reddit, Facebook, and Discord are popular, is because of the easy web-based onboarding process for new users. There are also web guis which make it easy to start new communities. Support the WWW first, and users will come (as long as the onboarding process is as easy as competitors)
  - dwaite 7y ago
    I agree, somewhat. XMPP was primarily about person-to-person communication, with group channels being a separate add-on. Part of iMessage's popularity is the ability to have group conversations the same way as those person to person communications - to the point where SMS users may get excluded from conversations. IRC is just a terrible architecture which is exposed in its protocol, but it will survive a long time because you fire it up to participate in a community, not just to talk to an individual person. IMHO paid tools like Slack got adoption when we had pre-existing protocols and clients for decades prior because it works as a package community-as-a-service (imho, to the point of being a detriment to usability). We had the technology to solve the problem, but the packaging and focus made it a legitimate product.
rodolphoarruda 7y ago
What is "JID" and how can I get one?
- kseistrup 7y ago
  “JID” is short for “Jabber ID” (jabber being the original name for the protocol), and is for XMPP what an email address is for SMTP. JIDs look like email addresses. Unless you want to run your own XMPP server, you can register a JID at one of the public XMPP servers: https://list.jabber.at/ https://list.jabber.at/
  - Whatitat90 7y ago
    I'd advise checking the server at: https://compliance.conversations.im/old/ https://compliance.conversations.im/old/
paulryanrogers 7y ago
No mention of Psi? It was the most feature-rich XMPP client I had used. Though the UI felt quirky and less polished than Pidgin.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  Psi seems to be abandoned at this point. No carbons support, for example.
  - Flowdalic 7y ago
    It still shows sign of ongoing development though: https://github.com/psi-im/psi/graphs/contributors?from=2016-12-12&to=2020-01-30&type=c https://github.com/psi-im/psi/graphs/contributors?from=2016-...
    - aidenn0 7y ago
      Wow, looks like it's back from the dead!
dependenttypes 7y ago
I tried Dino for a bit but returned to gajim straight away. Apparently Dino auto-accepts all omemo keys by default and while there is a way to globally disable it all of your current contacts will keep it on by default and I really did not feel like going through every single contact that I have and disabling it (as well as the keys that it accepted in the way).
mekster 7y ago
It's sad that we don't have a very good self hosted chat solution. Last time I checked around, XMPP didn't have a client that I could recommend to business clients that looked easy/simple to use, has no gotchas and looks native. Currently I use Mattermost, which does basic things fine and things are stable but the formatting is just getting in the way making texts unnecessary big and bold when people never intend to (there is a per user setting to disable formatting but I can't tell everyone to turn it off), and reply and quoting interface is just wrong and I never use it, so most of the other people use another vendor service which is easy and does things in a saner way. And video/voice is apparently not in their integrated goal and is thrown to some external paid service, so pretty much only simple text and file uploads. I'm not looking for anything too special in my opinion but I find it there's no self hosted solution that has, - Simple interface so I don't have to lecture people 10 minutes on how to use it. - WYSIWYG formatting instead of automatically parsing symbols into bold texts etc - File uploads - Decent reply/quote feature - Multiple people voice call - Optionally multiple people video calls - Native clients for desktop and clients and web Interface
- ajconway 7y ago
  Matrix seems to be the future now. The present is, however, Slack.
  - bachmeier 7y ago
    > The present is, however, Slack. Actually, in terms of number of users, the present is MS Teams. Both companies release their numbers and it's not even close.
    - giancarlostoro 7y ago
      Not surprised there. Plenty of companies already in bed with Microsoft. This allows them to maintain a "familiar" setup to everything else they have. Still feel like competitors can do better though. Microsoft Teams looks nice but people still have issues with it. I only used it long enough to not see those issues.
paule89 7y ago
Glad they do it right from the beginning. "Encryption, encryption, encryption Insert Balmer developer meme here" My question is what does matrix do better than xmpp. What does xmpp do better than matrix?
- SamWhited 7y ago
  Matrix works well as a big distributed graph protocol, not so much for chat. XMPP works well for chat or anything where you need efficient near-realtime streams (eg. stock trading and tickers sometimes use XMPP, some accessibility caption systems, etc.). Also XMPP is better standardized (by virtue of having a long-term non-profit standards body, Matrix is sort of trying to do that, but also trying to figure out how to monetize it which is never a good recipe for long term success when your spec becomes part of your product).
  - neiljohnson 7y ago
    There are multiple companies building on top of Matrix, some quite publicly like New Vector (https://matrix.org/blog/2018/04/26/matrix-and-riot-confirmed-as-the-basis-for-frances-secure-instant-messenger-app/ https://matrix.org/blog/2018/04/26/matrix-and-riot-confirmed...), some choose to do so more privately. However, the protocol itself is governed by the Matrix.org Foundation acting as a neutral guardian (https://matrix.org/foundation/ https://matrix.org/foundation/), so it unclear how the spec itself would become part of the product. To suggest that Matrix itself is not well suited to chat is to ignore the rapid adoption of the protocol now used by millions of people.
    - SamWhited 7y ago
      It really doesn't have massive adoption; it looks big because we're in a little bubble of people who play with new tech on HN, I suspect, but overall other protocols like XMPP are used by a vast number more companies and daily users. The matrix foundation has had trouble trying to fundraise to pay developers, it's not a proper non-profit standards foundation, in my opinion. I'd be skeptical of trusting them.

270 points by larma 7y ago

Is this a client or is Dino also running a chat server/issuing accounts etc? I used to use pidgin/adium/finch back when google & facebook supported XMPP, but I'm not sure what I'd do with a client now. Crucially: If I have Dino, can I chat with any of my friends? Or do I need to persuade them to install Dino & create an account somewhere first?

boudin 7y ago
Dino is a xmpp client, so no server. You have to create an account on a xmpp server to use it, which you can do on a public server or you can install your own server otherwise. Your friends needs a xmpp account somewhere (not required to be on the same domain) and can use any xmpp client to chat with you.
vertex-four 7y ago
There’s a good many public XMPP servers, or you could run one for yourself and your friends (I recommend Prosody, it works pretty much out of the box for that use case). If they have any XMPP client on any server, you can talk to them.

Zash 7y ago

Congratulations on the long-awaited first release!

ppjet6 7y ago

Congrats!

Leace 7y ago

I'm using Dino daily and it works well and looks modern. It still has minor issues here and there but it's finally a desktop client I can recommend to my non-technical friends. One question though: is Windows version planned?

larma 7y ago
Planned as in wanted: yes. Planned as in having it as a roadmap item: no, there is no roadmap :) It's definitely something that is now becoming more relevant after the first release.
- kawfey 7y ago
  I'm not a linux hater, but as long as it's in linux-land, there won't be much mass adoption. Not necessarily a bad thing, but might as well named it YAXC and tossed it into the list[0] (oh turns out Dino is on the list and there's already something called YAXIM) [0]https://xmpp.org/software/clients.html https://xmpp.org/software/clients.html
  - kick 7y ago
    What's the point in this comment? What good do you possibly think could have came from saying that? Not only are you pointing out something that they have already considered, you're pointing it out in an arrogant way, right after they say that they had already considered it and wanted something that would render your comment void, and on top of that, you end it with insulting the project. I'm genuinely fascinated: what was your mindset when posting this?
    - zapzupnz 7y ago
      I'm actually more interested in an explication for the mindset behind this comment's condescending tone. It's a fair enough comment to make — the notion that mass adoption comes by catering to the masses is not one that should be so readily dismissed with a downvote and aggressive italicisation. In a discussion of an XMPP client that's specifically designed for mass appeal, in this modern world of iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, and Discord, it's a perfectly reasonable point to bring up.

22byebye 7y ago

Dino, meet Deno.

Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago

Congrats on release, but the title is incorrect, word 'decentralized' should be removed. XMPP, like email, is not a 'decentralized' protocol, but a federated one. If you and your chat partners use the same server, it would be as centralized as WhatsApp or Signal.

larma 7y ago
I think you are confusing terms here, what you mean is distributed, which is only a subset of decentralized. Federated is also decentralized. See for example https://medium.com/distributed-economy/what-is-the-difference-between-decentralized-and-distributed-systems-f4190a5c6462 https://medium.com/distributed-economy/what-is-the-differenc... Beside that, Dino does support peer-to-peer file transfers using Jingle.
ryukafalz 7y ago
Federated protocols are decentralized, though; there's no central point of control. This graphic has been done to death at this point but it's relevant here: https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/centralized_decentralized_distributed.png https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/c...
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  Baran drew this pic almost 80 years ago. Since then, 'Decentralized' has become an umbrella term for both decentralized and distributed networks, and 'Federated' is currently a commonly accepted name for Email/XMPP type of networks. [1] This makes sense, because Baran was describing a communication network, like later ethernet, where nodes were interchangeable, wherever in XMPP the nodes are not interchangeable: if you have an account on xmpp.org server, you can't connect to xmpp.jp server and receive your messages. Thus, such networks required a special more narrow name to define it. [1] https://networkcultures.org/unlikeus/resources/articles/what-is-a-federated-network/ https://networkcultures.org/unlikeus/resources/articles/what...
joecool1029 7y ago
> Congrats on release, but the title is incorrect, word 'decentralized' should be removed. It is decentralized in theory (no one server controls the network), but 'federated' is the correct word to use here. When I saw the title I was assuming this was some cool new sort of client that created and managed a bunch of logins/identities as one on various XMPP servers and used something like OMEMO for key management on top of that 'layer'. Tox is a better example of a 'decentralized' protocol.

travbrack 7y ago

Glad there's a modern alternative to big tech's walled chat gardens. It's tragic that this protocol has so much potential but the "last mile" of getting it out to users has prevented success since FB and Google ditched it.

sneak 7y ago
They ditched it because of inbound spam and because almost no one used it.

maximp 7y ago

Not to be confused with Deno, the secure JS runtime from the creator of Node: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22102656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22102656

theamk 7y ago

Does this support offline messages and a history shared between devices? Lack of these features in XMPP was why my company moved to slack.

SamWhited 7y ago
These are both supported by XMPP and are wide spread among servers. They are also supported by Dino.

komcinity 7y ago

Are mobile versions in the pipeline?

komcinity 7y ago

Are mobile version in the pipeline?

rahimnathwani 7y ago
For mobile, there's already 'Conversations': https://github.com/siacs/Conversations https://github.com/siacs/Conversations
larma 7y ago
We are aiming for support for the Librem 5 and other smartphones that use a more GNU/Linux-ish environment. For Android there is conversations.im with a similar feature set.

jandrese 7y ago

Does this finally get away from the problem that XMPP had in the old days, where the usage model was tightly bound to the domain model, so each domain would have one and only one XMPP server (plus possibly a fallback) and if you aren't the domain administrator then you can pound sand? It was pretty much impossible to run your own server for fun unless you registered a domain or two because of the serious business logic baked into the design of the protocol. Ages ago when I was working on a replacement for IRC for an organization that needed to decentralize its servers because they had a lot of users spread across the world behind iffy internet uplinks but all on the same domain this was a huge headache. The old IRC system worked really well for them, but some of the higher ups were upset because it wasn't "enterprise quality" and thus shouldn't be on their network.

SamWhited 7y ago
That sounds like a server design problem, not a client problem. XMPP is stateful, so it is harder to have a distributed server but it's also doing something more complicated than eg. serving a document like HTTP. If you use a server like ejabberd and a proxy layer you can easily do geographic distribution of the server, or at least, with no more difficulty than any other protocol.
- jandrese 7y ago
  It bled over into clients too. You would tell your client to connect to "google.com" and it was hardcoded to connect to "xmpp.google.com", with no option to choose a different server. If you had multiple domains that you wanted to connect the servers would also default to xmpp.other.domain. If you wanted to connect to test.my.domain to test2.my.domain you were SOL. In a lab environment you could hack it with local DNS fuckery, but to actually deploy it would have been a nightmare. The whole thing assumed the entire domain would be served by one single server and all clients would always have good connectivity. Their old IRC model was just to have a local server at each site with a cache. When the network went down (which it did frequently), the local users would still have connectivity, and when the link came back up they would get the backscroll. Replicating this sort of config with XMPP turned out to be very difficult, and eventually the bosses relented and let them keep IRC, or at least they passed the problem off to someone else after I left.

linuxdude314 7y ago

What is the purpose of this? It seems more like a pet project than a serious release considering there's no roadmap. What is your motivation? Surely you're aware of the abundant amount of XMPP client applications that have existed for the better part of the last 20 years?

larma 7y ago
There is a section on motivation in the blog post (it literally has "Motivation" in the title): > A number of clients already exist for the XMPP protocol, however Dino sets a different focus. Existing clients target tech-savvy power users. The XMPP ecosystem lacks a client that is enjoyable to use while providing the features people expect from a modern chat application. Dino fills that gap by aiming to be secure and privacy-friendly while at the same time providing a great user experience.
- asnyder 7y ago
  http://pidgin.im http://pidgin.im seems to be pretty easy. Doesn't require any tech-savvyness other than entering your credentials in a nice, intuitive interface, unless I'm missing something?
  - johnmarcus 7y ago
    Encryption. You are missing encryption.
  - seba_dos1 7y ago
    Pidgin is a very bad XMPP client these days - at least until you have spent quite a lot of time on gathering and configuring all the plugins needed for modern XMPP experience.
  - julian-klode 7y ago
    Pidgin works fine if you use one device. If you have multiple devices or want to receive messages while you're offline, it does not support that.

exabrial 7y ago

Man, I need an XMPP client that does what slack does: group chats with the chat topics organized on the left side along with message history and status notifications.

xorcist 7y ago
Perhaps not the answer you are looking for, but if you can bridge XMPP groups to IRC (for example with Biboumi) then The Lounge (thelounge.chat) is a great Slack-like IRC client.
rakoo 7y ago
I heard kaiwa (http://getkaiwa.com/ http://getkaiwa.com/) is good, and it has this now standard Slack-like UI. Never used it though so I can't personally vouch for it.
- exabrial 7y ago
  I've seen that but development seem to have died for a 5 years ago unfortunately :/ it looked very promising

asnyder 7y ago

Looks like a nice project, but why wouldn't one use http://pidgin.im http://pidgin.im, which also supports XMPP and as far as I know is pretty solid, works well, and is also cross-platform? What advantages does this have over Pidgin?

als0 7y ago
The enormous selection of Pidgin plugins (e.g. Discord, Office365, IRC, etc) also makes it really hard for me to give it up for a prettier program like Dino. I hope Dino supports at least OTR encryption.
- upofadown 7y ago
  That sounds unlikely. Now that OMEMO is the hotness the interest in OTR has dropped pretty much to zero in the XMPP world. The Conversations client used to support OTR but that support has been discontinued.
drewcoo 7y ago
I had the same question. This seemed to be their answer: > A number of clients already exist for the XMPP protocol, however Dino sets a different focus. Existing clients target tech-savvy power users. The XMPP ecosystem lacks a client that is enjoyable to use while providing the features people expect from a modern chat application.
- asnyder 7y ago
  I'm sure one needs to be more tech-savvy to use Dino than to use Pidgin :), but I understand they were likely not thinking about Pidgin, but it does exist.
  - ppjet6 7y ago
    fwiw Pidgin is the cause of many rants in the XMPP "inner circles" since the adoption of new feature is close to 0.
7y ago

flatiron 7y ago

Does it do OTR?

larma 7y ago
No. OTR was not considered due to its lack of multi device support. OTRv4 now supports multi device, so it could be an additional option once it becomes standardized for XMPP. We are also monitoring development around MLS.
craftyguy 7y ago
The article says it supports OMEMO which, IMHO, is superior to OTR in many ways.

daryltucker 7y ago

Dino is slim and has some decent features, but Gajim is the client you want to be using today. Gajim has (although mostly broken) Voice and Video support as well as (working) plugin support and various plugins that you may expect. Dino really fell short for me in my needs for XMPP client, though I'm happy to see federated systems and their clients being promoted. Specifically Dino has issues with OMEMO support with Conversations, while Gajim does not see these issues. This means I can use Gajim on my computer and Conversations on my phone without issues.

ppjet6 7y ago
Maybe the OMEMO issues you're talking about are worth reporting?
larma 7y ago
We fixed some issues with OMEMO in the last months, so if your experience is a little bit older, those might be fixed already. If not, please report. Dino has a very limited plugin system, extending it is planned for future releases. We are also interested in adding support for A/V calling and we already have some pieces of code for it, though nothing in a quality for actual usage.
summersprite7 7y ago
> you want to be using Not everyone has to use the same thing. As you said: Gajim does lots and lots of things, some of it only half-works. Gajim might be good for some people, but confusing for others. I probably wouldn't recommend it to my mom. Dino has a good feature set and the user interface feels nice. It doesn't do everything, but that can also be a positive thing. Dino's OMEMO works fine for me.
fisle 7y ago
What issues did you have? I used Dino and Conversations for six months or so a year ago, and enjoyed the experience. Our conversations were all OMEMO encrypted.
julian-klode 7y ago
Gajim's an unstable mess that half of the time is not even connected to the server because it did not manage to reconnect after resume, or it just crashes. It is fairly useless on dark theme, rendering grey on grey for the backlog. Apart from a missing status notifier / appindicator, gajim is miles ahead.

nightbrawler 7y ago

Used to communicate with a bunch of friends via AIM, then Google Talk (XMPP), then Yahoo IM... we gave up after the last one shutdown. What's the goto XMPP service these days?

ppjet6 7y ago
I've been prosody for about 10 years now and I've always been happy with it. You can get it at https://prosody.im https://prosody.im, and if necessary there's a good tutorial at https://homebrewserver.club/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server.html https://homebrewserver.club/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server... EDIT: I might have misunderstood "service" thinking you wanted to self-host.
upofadown 7y ago
Dunno. I think you just pick a server you like and use that: * https://list.jabber.at/ https://list.jabber.at/
Boulth 7y ago
If you don't want to self host I'd recommend https://account.conversations.im/ https://account.conversations.im/ it's paid but properly maintained to have all extensions for modern experience. If you don't want to pay just pick something with good grades from https://compliance.conversations.im/old/ https://compliance.conversations.im/old/

drcross 7y ago

Slightly off topic but I've never had success with self hosted prosody and the "conversations" app being able to share photos/memes as one would in WhatsApp or telegram. This is the one thing keeping me from being able to sell my non-tech friends on it, has anyone had any luck in this regard?

seba_dos1 7y ago
I'm using it with self-hosted ejabberd and have no issues. It just works.
- duckMuppet 7y ago
  That's a standard module included in ejabberd. It may not be enabled by default in others, such as prosody
upofadown 7y ago
Enable the "http_upload" module if you have not yet done so.

rakoo 7y ago

While I've been a believer of XMPP and still believes it has a place, I have to admit that it doesn't have the appeal it once has. Now the IM protocol du jour is Matrix, which might or might not know the same fate; who knows. And another one might come later, and there are already others today that exist and are widely used. I think it's high time we had a concerted effort to have one great UI (probably per platform), and allow all protocol enthusiasts implement the specifics of their own choosing. It's fair to say that at this point the requirements for a "modern" UI are known, and while not all protocols may be up to the task, a very high percentage can be implemented in the most famous ones.

dragontamer 7y ago
I feel like the focus of XMPP puts the effort in the wrong place. FreeNode IRC is still used because community effort to maintain the channels. Similarly, subreddits live or die by community moderation. An effort that simplifies channel maintenance, like how easy it is to open a new Subreddit (the #1 portal, a static website URL representing your community identity) is the most important step forward. Once you establish a www identity for your community, then and only then can you discuss community chat. For example, lobster.rs community meets on IRC FreeNode, a protocol established on their about page. ------ The reason Reddit, Facebook, and Discord are popular, is because of the easy web-based onboarding process for new users. There are also web guis which make it easy to start new communities. Support the WWW first, and users will come (as long as the onboarding process is as easy as competitors)
- dwaite 7y ago
  I agree, somewhat. XMPP was primarily about person-to-person communication, with group channels being a separate add-on. Part of iMessage's popularity is the ability to have group conversations the same way as those person to person communications - to the point where SMS users may get excluded from conversations. IRC is just a terrible architecture which is exposed in its protocol, but it will survive a long time because you fire it up to participate in a community, not just to talk to an individual person. IMHO paid tools like Slack got adoption when we had pre-existing protocols and clients for decades prior because it works as a package community-as-a-service (imho, to the point of being a detriment to usability). We had the technology to solve the problem, but the packaging and focus made it a legitimate product.

rodolphoarruda 7y ago

What is "JID" and how can I get one?

kseistrup 7y ago
“JID” is short for “Jabber ID” (jabber being the original name for the protocol), and is for XMPP what an email address is for SMTP. JIDs look like email addresses. Unless you want to run your own XMPP server, you can register a JID at one of the public XMPP servers: https://list.jabber.at/ https://list.jabber.at/
- Whatitat90 7y ago
  I'd advise checking the server at: https://compliance.conversations.im/old/ https://compliance.conversations.im/old/

paulryanrogers 7y ago

No mention of Psi? It was the most feature-rich XMPP client I had used. Though the UI felt quirky and less polished than Pidgin.

aidenn0 7y ago
Psi seems to be abandoned at this point. No carbons support, for example.
- Flowdalic 7y ago
  It still shows sign of ongoing development though: https://github.com/psi-im/psi/graphs/contributors?from=2016-12-12&to=2020-01-30&type=c https://github.com/psi-im/psi/graphs/contributors?from=2016-...
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    Wow, looks like it's back from the dead!

dependenttypes 7y ago

I tried Dino for a bit but returned to gajim straight away. Apparently Dino auto-accepts all omemo keys by default and while there is a way to globally disable it all of your current contacts will keep it on by default and I really did not feel like going through every single contact that I have and disabling it (as well as the keys that it accepted in the way).

mekster 7y ago

It's sad that we don't have a very good self hosted chat solution. Last time I checked around, XMPP didn't have a client that I could recommend to business clients that looked easy/simple to use, has no gotchas and looks native. Currently I use Mattermost, which does basic things fine and things are stable but the formatting is just getting in the way making texts unnecessary big and bold when people never intend to (there is a per user setting to disable formatting but I can't tell everyone to turn it off), and reply and quoting interface is just wrong and I never use it, so most of the other people use another vendor service which is easy and does things in a saner way. And video/voice is apparently not in their integrated goal and is thrown to some external paid service, so pretty much only simple text and file uploads. I'm not looking for anything too special in my opinion but I find it there's no self hosted solution that has, - Simple interface so I don't have to lecture people 10 minutes on how to use it. - WYSIWYG formatting instead of automatically parsing symbols into bold texts etc - File uploads - Decent reply/quote feature - Multiple people voice call - Optionally multiple people video calls - Native clients for desktop and clients and web Interface

ajconway 7y ago
Matrix seems to be the future now. The present is, however, Slack.
- bachmeier 7y ago
  > The present is, however, Slack. Actually, in terms of number of users, the present is MS Teams. Both companies release their numbers and it's not even close.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Not surprised there. Plenty of companies already in bed with Microsoft. This allows them to maintain a "familiar" setup to everything else they have. Still feel like competitors can do better though. Microsoft Teams looks nice but people still have issues with it. I only used it long enough to not see those issues.

paule89 7y ago

Glad they do it right from the beginning. "Encryption, encryption, encryption Insert Balmer developer meme here" My question is what does matrix do better than xmpp. What does xmpp do better than matrix?

SamWhited 7y ago
Matrix works well as a big distributed graph protocol, not so much for chat. XMPP works well for chat or anything where you need efficient near-realtime streams (eg. stock trading and tickers sometimes use XMPP, some accessibility caption systems, etc.). Also XMPP is better standardized (by virtue of having a long-term non-profit standards body, Matrix is sort of trying to do that, but also trying to figure out how to monetize it which is never a good recipe for long term success when your spec becomes part of your product).
- neiljohnson 7y ago
  There are multiple companies building on top of Matrix, some quite publicly like New Vector (https://matrix.org/blog/2018/04/26/matrix-and-riot-confirmed-as-the-basis-for-frances-secure-instant-messenger-app/ https://matrix.org/blog/2018/04/26/matrix-and-riot-confirmed...), some choose to do so more privately. However, the protocol itself is governed by the Matrix.org Foundation acting as a neutral guardian (https://matrix.org/foundation/ https://matrix.org/foundation/), so it unclear how the spec itself would become part of the product. To suggest that Matrix itself is not well suited to chat is to ignore the rapid adoption of the protocol now used by millions of people.
  - SamWhited 7y ago
    It really doesn't have massive adoption; it looks big because we're in a little bubble of people who play with new tech on HN, I suspect, but overall other protocols like XMPP are used by a vast number more companies and daily users. The matrix foundation has had trouble trying to fundraise to pay developers, it's not a proper non-profit standards foundation, in my opinion. I'd be skeptical of trusting them.