Prerequisites

Platform Support

Now here comes the part I have the most concerns about. While Bitlbee states they support almost every Linux distribution, I cannot guarantee the extent to which you may or may not face issues. Considering the project’s age and that it is written in the C programming language, which is known for running on almost any device, I think it’s unlikely you’ll encounter issues.

Still, I suggest consulting your platform’s wiki or, of course, the original wiki from Bitlbee.

If you still have issues or have specific questions, do not hesitate to send me a message!

Checking Availability

Repology is another great way to check the availability on most relevant distros. As for bitlbee, it looks very promising, with up-to-date support for Arch, Fedora, and Debian/Ubuntu. We also have support for Alpine.

Alpine Linux is always good to keep in mind, as it comes with very low resource usage, is utilized for many Docker images, and, if you own an Android phone, is the distribution powering Termux, which enables you to run Linux with its great advantages on your phone. And yes, of course, you could utilize your phone to host Bitlbee.

Windows Users

If you currently run Windows, I would take a look at WSL2.

Discord Plugin

Taking a look at the wiki for Discord, you will realize there are two services for Discord. While the native service is not maintained anymore, the other one is supported through libpurple, which is basically XMPP. Bitlbee explains some more details about these types of services.

NixOS Configuration

I run NixOS, which offers native integration. Feel free to use the following configuration if you do too.

{
  pkgs,
  ...
}:
{
  services.bitlbee = {
    enable = true;
    interface = "0.0.0.0";
    libpurple_plugins = [
      pkgs.pidginPackages.purple-discord
    ];
  };
  networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [
    6667
  ];
}