Instant messaging and chatting

Introduction
Instant messaging (IM) is by far one of the most popular way to communicate with buddies and relatives. We all do it in our day-to-day lives. In Windows, the most common applications that enable us to chat / IM are Yahoo! Messenger, GTalk, ICQ, Miranda, etc. Although these applications are not available for the Linux platform, there are some alternatives (in most cases, better alternatives) to do the same. Let's have a look at them.

Instant Messengers
Kopete and Pidgin are Instant Messengers / chat clients that support multiple protocols. That means, when any of them, you will be able to, say, chat with your Yahoo! friends and GTalk friends at the same time, through the same interface.

Skype is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) that allows two or more Skype users to talk to each other through headphones, free of cost.
 * Kopete (included in Granular)
 * Pidgin (available in repository)
 * Skype (available in repository)

IRC Clients
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is yet another popular way (not as popular as instant messaging) to chat with your friends and participate in chat rooms (called channels in IRC). IRC clients available in Granular are:
 * XChat (available in repository)
 * KVIRC
 * KSIRC