The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable LAN messengers.
General information
[edit]Basic general information about the LAN messengers: creator/company, license/price, among others.
Protocol | Author, creator | First public release date | Latest stable version | Cost (USD) | Software license | Programming language | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BeeBEEP[1][2] | BeeBEEP Protocol | Marco Mastroddi | 2010 | 5.8.6 (February 13, 2023 | )No cost | GPL-3.0-or-later | C++ and Qt |
BORGChat | ? | Ionut Cioflan | 2002 | v1.0.0 b438 (March 31, 2007[±] | )No cost[3] | Proprietary | ? |
Briar | Bramble Protocol | Briarproject.org | 2018 | 1.4.19 (January 4, 2023 | )No cost | GPL-3.0-or-later | Java |
iChat | Bonjour IM Protocol | Apple Inc. | 2002 | 6.0.1 (1002) (February 1, 2012 | )bundled with OS | Proprietary | Likely Objective-C |
iptux[4] | Windows Messenger service | Jally, ManPT, others | 2008 | 0.51 (November 20, 2009 | )No cost[5] | GPL-2.0-or-later | ? |
Miranda NG | Windows Messenger service | Roland Rabien | 2000 | 0.96.1 (June 2, 2022 | )No cost | GPL-2.0-or-later | C/C++ |
Pidgin[6] | Bonjour IM Protocol | Mark Spencer, others | 1998 | 2.14.12 (December 31, 2022 | )No cost | GPL-2.0-or-later | C |
qTox | Tox Protocol | Tux3 | ? | 1.17.6 (March 7, 2022 | )No cost | GPL-3.0-or-later | C++ and Qt |
Operating system support
[edit]The operating systems the messengers can run on without emulators or compatibility layers.
Client | Windows | Mac OS | Linux | Android | iOS | BSD | Other |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BeeBEEP | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Raspberry OS |
BORGChat | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | |
Briar | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | |
iChat | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | |
iptux | |||||||
Miranda NG | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | |
Pidgin | Yes | Yes | Yes | FreeBSD NetBSD OpenBSD |
Solaris Illumos | ||
qTox | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | FreeBSD |
Features
[edit]Information on what features each of the clients support.
Toolkits or SDKs | Private messages | Private chat | Public chat | Message board | Encryption | File transfer | Unicode (UTF-8) | Message filtration | Graphical smileys | Message logging | Whiteboard | Terminal Service Compatibility | User base in Active Directory | Serverless (No server required) | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BeeBEEP | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
BORGChat | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
Briar | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
iChat 1 | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
iptux | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
Miranda NG | ? | Yes | ? | ? | ? | ? | Yes | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | ? | Yes |
qTox | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
Note 1: Using Apple's Bonjour protocol
See also
[edit]- Comparison of cross-platform instant messaging clients
- Comparison of instant messaging protocols
- Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients
- LAN messenger
- Windows Messenger service
References
[edit]- ^ "BeeBEEP (Free Office Messenger)". SourceForge.net. Retrieved 2 November 2017.
- ^ Wallen, Jack (2012-08-22). "Get LAN-based interoffice secure chat with BeeBEEP". techrepublic.com. TechRepublic. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
- ^ "BORGChat". Softpedia. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
- ^ Wallen, Jack (2010-09-17). "Instant message on your LAN with iptux". ghacks.net. Ghacks. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
- ^ "iptux". freecode.com. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
- ^ "Use Pidgin for Chatting And Transferring Files on Local Network Without Internet Connection". ubuntubuzz.com. Retrieved 9 December 2016.