I am off to university next month and am looking for a good chat program to keep in touch with my family. It needs to have both webcam and mic support. Are there Jabber protocols which support this?

Preferably, I'd like a minimalist app that runs with no GNOME or KDE deps. A command line app with a little X window for the webcam would be ideal, but I don't think such a thing exists. What are my options?

I think VoIP sounds like overkill, but if you think it seems like the best (or only) option, could you please point me in the direction of a guide for someone who knows next to nothing about it?

Thanks :-)

To be fair, I have not tried to use the web cam option (I don't have one), but Skype has worked very well for me on Ubuntu. You can download and use the calling features from computer to computer for voice chat or text chat for free (and according to their site video calls are free, too). If you'd like to call landlines or cells, you'll have to purchase SkypeIn.

There is a binary available for Ubuntu on their site. I use it exclusively for my home phone. The downside is that your family members would have to download the Skype client for their machines. Skype is not open source software.

To install, download the binary. Open a terminal. Type in:

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply, but I really would rather avoid this kind of closed, proprietary software. Does anyone else have any suggestions?

I'll look into Ekiga later I think, not sure how I'd talk to folks using Windows though...

ekiga works great.

aMSN also works well as does kopete, although the adio support just isn't right, but then it doesn't work in windows either.

Ekiga, great audio and video support.