GUI chat over LAN
Now that I've setup our little LAN I'm interested in the easiest possible way to setup a GUI chat capability between the two connected computers. After asking this question on IRC I got suggested to use write, talkd and other such stuff, but what I really need is something that can be used with a GUI (prefferably GTK) especially since my sisters aren't some GNU/Linux or command line experts (not afraid of it, just not that interested) and would prefer a GUI program they can just launch from the desktop when they want to send me a message. I would then recieve the message to my own client program.
I am looking for something direct, hopefully not involving any server setups, just maybe some sort of deamon or background app running, communicating with the deamon running on other computer over LAN and sending a message to it when we do. 
So basically it should be a very simple GUI program for communicating between two computers.
Anyone knows of such a thing?
Thanks
Just use a regular IM service like Jabber or AIM on whatever your favorite client is.
Just use a regular IM service like Jabber or AIM on whatever your favorite client is.
But it's a bit wasteful to do internal communication through an external server when you're on a pay-per-MB connection, especially when you might also want to transfer files through the chat program.
I would try setting up a jabber server.
Well it's not all pay per MB if download is routed through a proxy and upload is usually not that big, but it's true that it would be nicer to have it internal rather than external for this type of thing.
Can't it be done in a simpler way than setting up a Jabber server though? That still requires accounts to be set up and all that. The way I imagine it should be perfectly possible to just have a daemon on both sides listening for new messages and hooked to a GUI where it can display it and allow replies. Why wouldn't that be possible? No real server included..
Hmm.. there's an idea for writing a program like that if I had enough programming knowledge.
I wrote one of them a while back (originally for windows, later rewritten for linux/gtk+). You can (currently, this may change...) find it here: http://jollybox.de/blog.en.php?style=blue&blog=chat . It contains a simple client GUI and command-line server program. Should be easy enough to figure out
Cool! That URL is invalid though.
that's drupal's fault, not mine. http://jollybox.de/blog.en.php?blog=chat should also work
Thanks alot. Gonna check it out.
Cool, that works.
So basically I just need to run the chatserver.py in the background and everything's ready. The chatclient then communicates through it. Very nice! 
Now if I could just tray the client too on both computers and make it notify when there is a new message. Maybe I could play a bit with the program and see if I can make some modifications. I was learning python some time before.
Oh boy, good luck with the X11 tray icon inteface...
ma_d, with gtk it's not as difficult as one might think
see http://afoc.k.vu/~thomas/fz-chatplus-alpha2.tar.gz
Yeah, he did it already and it works nicely.