chat over lan from linux to linux?

You actually can do this with netcat, I believe it is already installed in most cases on linux, and it's dead simple.

On PC 1, type: nc -l 55555

On PC 2, type: nc $IP 55555, where $IP equals the local IP address of PC 1 [e.x. 192.168.2.50]

Once you do this, in the same box, from PC 2, type something and press enter. Then go over and look at PC 1, and your message will be there! It works both ways.

You can also choose a different port than 55555, or if you opened your firewall, you can do this through the internet via your external IP.

You can use iptux. It is a very convenient GUI-based program. You can even send files (and entire folder) to your colleague.

From a terminal,

sudo apt-get install iptux

will do the job.

Here is a screenshot of this tool.

No need for netcat hacks.

The talk (or ytalk - same protocol but newer, multi-user) is a visual communication program which copies lines from your terminal to that of another user. They are probably the closest UNIX equivalent to netsend. An advantage is that communications can be secured by running over ssh.

Packages are in the software repositories. Usage is simply:

talk user@host

More information here:

• Wikipedia
• man talk
• man ytalk

Edit: found a screenshot on wikipedia:

Edit again (response to psusi's comment): I'm not sure about Gnome, but KDE will show a popup for a talk request: