To install this app you will first need to install the XMPP server.
The Profanity shell based user interface and is perhaps the simplest way to use XMPP from a laptop. It's also a good way to ensure that your OTR keys are the same even when logging in from different laptops or devices, and it also means that if those devices later become compomised then there are no locally stored OTR keys to be found.
ssh username@domain -p 2222
Then select Run App and then profanity.
Generate an OTR key with:
/otr gen
Then to start a conversation using OTR:
/otr start otherusername@otheruserdomain
or if you're already in an insecure chat with someone just use:
/otr start
Set a security question and answer:
/otr question "What is the name of your best friends rabbit?" fiffi
On the other side the user can enter:
/otr answer fiffi
For the most paranoid you can also obtain your fingerprint:
/otr myfp
and quote that. If they quote theirs back you can check it with:
/otr theirfp
If the fingerprints match then you can be pretty confident that unless you have been socially engineered via the question and answer you probably are talking to who you think you are, and that it will be difficult for mass surveillance systems to know the content of the conversation. For more details see this guide
When accessed via the user control panel the client is automatically routed through Tor and so if you are also using OTR then this provides protection for both message content and metadata.