Chatting over home network from one CPU to the next??

[carlos123]

I've been looking high and low (i.e. sourceforge, google, google linux, other forums, etc..) for a simple instant messanging program that I could use to communicate between my Gentoo computer and a Windows 95 computer that is upstairs from me.

I have looked everywhere and it's hard to believe but there seems to be almost nothing along the lines of an instant messenging application that will allow me to just chat over a private intranet.

Open source that is and that is usable under both Windows and Linux (switching to Linux for my Windows computer user is not an option ).

There is jabber but as most things Linux it looks like a pain to install as server on my Gentoo (heck I don't even have my mouse working under Gentoo yet, never mind an IM server) and to set up intranet communications with it.

Then there are others like Gaim and Trillian but they all make use of third party, outside my intranet, servers to facilitate the conversation. Something I don't want.

Is there not something simple somewhere? That uses the simple technology of sending and receiving data over IP? From one computer to another? Directly?

Without fancy stuff?

I just want to communicate with my wife upstairs every once in a while without having to set up a big server like Jabber or go out to a third party to do it.

Any suggestions? I've thought of writing my own somehow using Perl or other language available under both Linux and Windows and which can send and receive packets but that would take up a lot of time (which I don't have much of).

I can send a message to the Windows computer using samba but am not sure that my wife could send something back without my having to once again get buried in the details of yet another program (i.e. Samba) to configure and tinker with.

Sometimes I wonder if there is anything at all under Linux which is simple!

Thanks.

Carlos

[psp]

Linpop (winpopup for linux) is currently masked. If you're running samba this should work.

Hope this helps...

[Sven Vermeulen]

Perhaps installing an ircd can help. Very extensible

[carlos123]

Thanks very much for the tid bits. Every little tid bit helps!

I was looking at LinPopup and was going to look up and see if it was emerged. May I ask what a "masked" version is?

I'll definitely look up stuff about how to install and work with an irc daemon too.

Thanks again!

Carlos

[Sven Vermeulen]

Masked means that it's a new ebuild and isn't tested thouroughly yet. It also means that you can only emerge (install) it by
- unmasking (removing the item from the packages.mask), or by
- manually selecting the ebuild