Install GNU Jami on Ubuntu and Trisquel

GNU Jami is the new name of GNU Ring (ring.cx if you remember), the decentralized instant messaging from The GNU Project. Do you know, Jami is one among several FSF's High Priority Projects under the section Real-time Voice & Video Conferencing free software? And upon the name change, Jami got a lot of improvements including distros supports including Trisquel. This article explains how to install GNU Jami on Ubuntu and Trisquel for beginners. Happy conferencing!

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About free software for communication: Telegram | Riot/Matrix | Kontalk | Zoiper VoIP

About Jami

 

• What you can do with GNU Jami? Video call, voice call, conference, and of course text chat like what you do with Skype, WhatsApp, or such instant messengers.

• Where you can use GNU Jami? Jami is available for your computer, your laptop, your smartphone, and you Mac. More installations possible without limit because GNU Jami is free software.

• What is so special about GNU Jami? It does not have server, that is, a central point intermediating between you and your friends. Your account is saved in your own computer and not in a server, unlike WhatsApp or Skype.

More features explained at its new website.

Installation

There are 2 options of installation.

First option:

This option is installing it from Ubuntu's repository maintained by Ubuntu community:

For Ubuntu version 19.04 onwards:

$ sudo apt-get install jami

If your Ubuntu or Trisquel version cannot install with that command, change it to this:

$ sudo apt-get install ring

Second option:

This option is official from The Jami Project itself.

For Ubuntu version 19.10:

$ sudo apt install gnupg dirmngr ca-certificates curl --no-install-recommends curl -s https://dl.jami.net/ring.pub.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/jami-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
$ sudo  sh -c "echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/jami-archive-keyring.gpg] https://dl.jami.net/nightly/ubuntu_19.10/ ring main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jami.list"
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install jami

For Ubuntu version 18.04:

$ sudo apt install gnupg dirmngr ca-certificates curl --no-install-recommends
curl -s https://dl.jami.net/ring.pub.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/jami-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
$ sudo  sh -c "echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/jami-archive-keyring.gpg] 
https://dl.jami.net/nightly/ubuntu_18.04/ ring main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jami.list"
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install jami 

For Trisquel 8.0 Flidas or Ubuntu 16.04:

$ sudo apt install gnupg dirmngr ca-certificates curl --no-install-recommends
curl -s https://dl.jami.net/ring.pub.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/jami-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
$ sudo  sh -c "echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/jami-archive-keyring.gpg] https://dl.jami.net/nightly/ubuntu_16.04/ ring main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jami.list"
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install jami

Example screenshot:

For Other Distros

Jami supports many distros today thanks to a lot of contributors (you could join too!). You can find ways to install Jami on your distro at https://jami.net/download-jami-linux.

Test Jami

My Jami username is malsasa you can add to test your account. This real name username is a new thing on GNU Jami as the old GNU Ring did not support that except a hard-to-remember, long alphanumeric code, as name.

Personally, I am testing Jami on my online course with my students to do voice conferences. That's why I install Jami once again. For testing, I hope in near future we could see Jami available as AppImage so testing would be faster and easier to be done by more people.


Enjoy communication!

Futher Links

• Trisquel forum's discussion about GNU Jami
• Jami's FAQ 
• Jami for businesses  
• Ubuntubuzz's article about the former GNU Ring

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This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.