Naim

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The correct title of this article is naim. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

For the UK manufacturer of audio and hifi equipment, see Naim Audio.

naim is a minimalist messaging and chat program written by Daniel Reed which supports the protocols AIM, ICQ, IRC, and lily (CMC). Unlike most messaging clients, it is not graphical; it runs from the console using the ncurses library. naim is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL.

naim is a multiplatform program. While it is primarily aimed at Unix-like systems (and is in fact distributed with several flavors of BSD and Linux), it can be made to work on a wide variety of systems including Microsoft Windows through the cygwin project.

naim uses the AOL instant messenger TOC protocol instead of the OSCAR protocol because the TOC protocol is less likely to change and is better supported by AOL. This means naim lacks some features other instant messengers have, like the ability to check other people's away messages. However, it makes naim theoretically more stable than OSCAR-based clients since those clients use a reverse-engineered protocol which AOL may change without notice.