You know the drift, most people nowadays use proprietary messaging protocols. Be it SMS, Skype, Discord, Teamspeak, etc. And we're all tired of them. A lot of people are stuck to these services because all their friends are on them. But let's say that you're not limited by what normies want to use, and could use whatever protocol you'd like, I'd like to argue that Email + IRC is your best choice.
When you're messaging you either send messages that you want the recipitent to read immediately, or messages that aren't time-critical. Email is non-time-critical unless you run the smtpd on your local machine. And IRC is the reverse.
Email is so ubiquitous that every site on the planet makes you sign up with an email address. There's nothing extra to set up, since you already have an email address (I hope). And using IRC is as simple as setting up a channel with a key, no operators needed! Compared to setting up Jabber/XMPP it's literal child's play.
I realize this post would be pointless if I introduced all of these protocols without telling you how to use them. So here's what I use:
| IRC server: ngircd | An IRC server with few SLOC and a name you can't say in public |
| IRC client: pidgin | An IRC client that just werkz |
| Email server: opensmtpd | An email server from the openbsd guys |
| Email client: neomutt | Neomutt is the most feature rich email client |
| DKIM: dkimproxy | Signs your outgoing mail messages to prove your identity |
| MTA: msmtp | Relays (sends) emails to email servers |
| IMAP server: dovecot | The only IMAP server I bother with |
| IMAP client: isync | IMAP client for storing your email offline |
Written: Tue, 2022 Aug 02, Last modified: Wed, 2022 Aug 03
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