Debian 13 "Trixie" full freeze has started 2025-05-17, so this is a good time to take a look at some of the features, that this release will bring. Here we will focus on packages related to XMPP, a.k.a. Jabber.

XMPP is a universal communication protocol for instant messaging, push notifications, IoT, WebRTC, and social applications. It has existed since 1999, originally called "Jabber", it has a diverse and active developers community.

Clients

• Dino, a modern XMPP client has been upgraded from 0.4.2 to 0.5.0
  Dino now uses OMEMO encryption by default. It also supports XEP-0447: Stateless File Sharing for unencrypted file transfers. Users can now see preview images or other file details before downloading the file. Multiple widgets are redesigned to be compatible with mobile devices, e.g. running Mobian.
• Gajim, a GTK+-based Jabber client has been upgraded from 1.7.3 to 2.1.1
  There are many new features in Gajim, e.g. XEP-0444: Message Reactions, XEP-0461: Message Replies, XEP-0425: Moderated Message Retraction, XEP-0490: Message Displayed Synchronization, voice message recording, migration to GTK 4, and a lot of UI changes.
• go-sendxmpp, a CLI tool to send messages to contacts or MUCs: 0.5.6 → 0.14.1
  New features are support for sending XEP-0066: Out of Band Data and support for several modern authentication features (XEP-0388: Extensible SASL Profile, XEP-0386: Bind 2, XEP-0484: Fast Authentication Streamlining Tokens). New support of modern SCRAM mechanisms (SCRAM-SHA-1(-PLUS), SCRAM-SHA-256(-PLUS), SCRAM-SHA-515(-PLUS)) and SASL SCRAM Downgrade Protection (XEP-0474: SASL SCRAM Downgrade Protection) improve the security of the login process. Also a lot of bugfixes and smaller improvements found their way to the new version, for details see the changelog.
• Kaidan, a simple and user-friendly Jabber/XMPP client is upgraded from 0.8.0 to 0.12.2
  Kaidan supports end-to-end encryption via OMEMO 2, Automatic Trust Management and XMPP Providers. It has been migrated to QT 6 and many features have been added: XEP-0444: Message Reactions, XEP-0461: Message Replies, chat pinning, inline audio player, chat list filtering, local message removal, etc.
• Libervia is upgraded from 0.9.0~hg3993 to 0.9.0~hg4352
  Among other features, it now also contains a gateway to ActivityPub, e.g. to Mastodon.
• Poezio, a console based XMPP client as been updated from 0.14 to 0.15.0
  Better self-ping support. Use the system CA store by default.
• Profanity, a console based XMPP client has been upgraded from 0.13.1 to 0.15.0.
  Add support for XEP-0054: vcard-temp, Improve MAM support, show encryption for messages from history and handle alt+enter as newline char.
• Psi+, a QT based XMPP client (basic version) has been upgraded from 1.4.554 to 1.4.1456
• xmpp-dns, a CLI tool to check XMPP SRV records: 0.3.4 → 0.4.5
  It now supports showing connection targets defined by XEP-0156: Discovering Alternative XMPP Connection Methods/XEP-0487: Host Meta 2 - One Method To Rule Them All and testing of XEP-0206: XMPP Over BOSH and Websocket connections. A detailed list of changes can be found in the changelog.

Servers

• ejabberd, an extensible realtime platform (XMPP server, MQTT broker, SIP service) has been updated from Version 23.01 to 24.12
  Add support for XEP-0425: Moderated Message Retraction, XEP-0402: PEP Native Bookmarks, and XEP-0424 Message Retraction.
• Prosŏdy, a lightweight extensible XMPP server has been upgraded from 0.12.3 to 13.0.1
  Admins can disable and enable accounts as needed. A new role and permissions framework. Storage and performance improvements.

Libraries

• libomemo-c 0.5.0 to 0.5.1
• libstrophe, an XMPP library in C has been upgraded from 0.12.2 to 0.14.0
  It now supports XEP-0138: Stream Compression and adds various modern SCRAM mechanisms.
• omemo-dr, an OMEMO library used by Gajim is now in Debian, in version 1.0.1
• python-nbxmpp, a non blocking Jabber/XMPP Python 3 library, upgrade from 4.2.2 to 6.1.1
• python-oldmemo, a python-omemo backend for OMEMO 1, 1.0.3 to 1.1.0
• python-omemo, a Python 3 implementation of the OMEMO protocol, 1.0.2 to 1.2.0
• python-twomemo, a python-omemo backend for OMEMO 2, 1.0.3 to 1.1.0
• qxmpp 1.4.0 to 1.10.3
• slixmpp-omemo new 1.2.2
• slixmpp 1.8.3 to 1.10.0
• strophejs, a library for writing XMPP clients has been upgraded from 1.2.14 to 3.1.0

Gateways/Transports

• Biboumi, a gateway between XMPP and IRC, upgrades from 9.0 to 9.0+20241124.
• Debian 13 Trixie includes Slidge 0.2.12 and Matridge 0.2.3 for the first time! It is a gateway between XMPP and Matrix, with support for many chat features.

Not in Trixie

• Spectrum 2, a gateway from XMPP to various other messaging systems, did not make it into Debian 13, because it depends on Swift, which has release critical bugs and therefore cannot be part of a stable release.