BitlBee Setup Guide

Introduction

Bitlbee is a messaging gateway with its initial release on 9 August 2002. It has been developed for over two decades; while I assume the current development is mostly maintenance, it’s fully featured. It’s also really awesome that such a niche software has been taken care of for such a long time.

Bitlbee works on your host the same as it does on a VPS. For demonstration, I will set it up on my localhost and then connect from my BlackBerry to my localhost to interact with Bitlbee. I also suggest doing the same to avoid the risk of leaking any information by accident and for security reasons. I will do a follow-up on how to self-host it on a cheap VPS or access it over a public instance in general.

IRC

Bitlbee itself is based on the Internet Relay Chat, better known as IRC. IRC was established in 1988, has its own history, and, although it has lost popularity over time, there are many ways, clients, and devices that are able to establish a connection to an IRC network.

XMPP

Now the last network introduced by Bitlbee is the eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. To keep it short, XMPP is the backbone of the most well-known messaging platform, you guessed it, WhatsApp.

Architecture Overview

Let’s set IRC, Bitlbee, XMPP, and your device in action to get a better understanding:

1. Your device will establish a connection to the gateway through IRC. In my case, my device is a BlackBerry Classic. I use Revolution IRC.

2. Connection established! Set up the service according to your needs. For demonstration, I am going to set up Discord and send some messages to Laundry Mat Linux Shack. The Discord service does not have native integration in Bitlbee; it’s built on XMPP, as are many more plugins you will connect to in the near future.

3. Let’s have fun and brag in front of people about having the same or similar feature parity as them. While I do maybe brag sometimes, it’s very often a topic. A great way to shine with your geekiness and knowledge!