You can use a third-party XMPP client such as Gajim, Swift, Pidgin or Jitsi. Some XMPP servers require TLS, which breaks GTalk federation, because Google refuses to encrypt XMPP federation, and always has.
SoFurry XMPP federation does not yet work, with any XMPP server. http://is-a-furry.org/ is a good example of an XMPP server that does work with other XMPP servers, including GTalk.
Please note that messages over XMPP federation links are almost never encrypted. It is highly recommended that if you have any reason to believe your family or workplace may find furriness questionable that you use OTR and a privacy VPN. Most XMPP servers support client-to-server cryptography, but not server-to-server cryptography.
The state of affairs regarding XMPP federation TLS support is a mess. Part of the problem is that valid SSL certificates are costly, because the CA oligopoly agrees to charge a ridiculous amount. Somewhat cheaper SSL certs can be had from Gandi.net and others, but server-to-server TLS relies on valid certificates.
An experimental feature that supports DANE, TLS certificate validation that relies on the DNS infrastructure instead of CAs is supported in some XMPP servers, but is only experimental at this point. DANE would allow a far less expensive certificate validation service that would make XMPP federation cryptography easier, but in the mean time, the solution is end-to-end cryptography with OTR.
For Pidgin, OTR is a plugin provided by http://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ . Some clients have built-in support for OTR, but these are not common.
Heaven is not a place, it's being with people who love you.
You can use a third-party XMPP client such as Gajim, Swift, Pidgin or Jitsi. Some XMPP servers require TLS, which breaks GTalk federation, because Google refuses to encrypt XMPP federation, and always has.
SoFurry XMPP federation does not yet work, with any XMPP server. http://is-a-furry.org/ is a good example of an XMPP server that does work with other XMPP servers, including GTalk.
Please note that messages over XMPP federation links are almost never encrypted. It is highly recommended that if you have any reason to believe your family or workplace may find furriness questionable that you use OTR and a privacy VPN. Most XMPP servers support client-to-server cryptography, but not server-to-server cryptography.
The state of affairs regarding XMPP federation TLS support is a mess. Part of the problem is that valid SSL certificates are costly, because the CA oligopoly agrees to charge a ridiculous amount. Somewhat cheaper SSL certs can be had from Gandi.net and others, but server-to-server TLS relies on valid certificates.
An experimental feature that supports DANE, TLS certificate validation that relies on the DNS infrastructure instead of CAs is supported in some XMPP servers, but is only experimental at this point. DANE would allow a far less expensive certificate validation service that would make XMPP federation cryptography easier, but in the mean time, the solution is end-to-end cryptography with OTR.
For Pidgin, OTR is a plugin provided by http://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ . Some clients have built-in support for OTR, but these are not common.
Heaven is not a place, it's being with people who love you.