Hi, I’ve run up an OpenFire server at jabber.linux.co.uk. I’ve always been aware that the ‘chat’ facility here wasn’t the best in the world, would be interested to see if OpenFire is a better solution - if anyone has 10 mins to kill … 
To try it out, run up “Pidgin” and create a new account.
This will be a Jabber (or XMPP) account of the form @jabber.linux.co.uk, if you tick the right buttons it should try to create a new account for you.
Once in, you can friend others, or try to join the “LinuxForums” chat room …
If it proves useful, I’ll try to add a Javascript XMPP client for anyone not wanting to use Pidgin.
(incidentally, I’m using Empathy, this works just as well [better?] that Pidgin , with the exception it doesn’t seem to like ‘creating’ new accounts)