Hey guys, sorry for the dumb question but my Librem 15 is my first experience with Linux.
When I googled this the results were all “It’s in insert other linux OS version of Software, just install it.” I was able to get base Pidgin that way, but not OTR. It doesn’t appear there’s a OTRInstall.exe equivalent, and I don’t know how to proceed.
The only time I use Pidgin is specifically for OTR and this is the last thing I still need my Windows computer for so I’m anxious to solve this. Seems odd to need Windows over PureOS to successfully have encrypted chat.
Thanks in advance.
Fortunately you don’t need Windows for encrypted chat. 
OTR is “Off The Record” and there are a number of plugins to use OTR in a variety of apps on Linux, including Pidgin. In fact, you can install the Pidgin OTR plugin this way;
apt install pidgin-otr
on the command line.
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Golly that’s simple. Thanks! Just for my mnemonics, what does “apt” stand for? I suspect I may wish to use it again in the future.
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‘apt’ is Advanced Package Tool and it is the package management tool used in Debian. There are GUIs for it but the command line interface is fast and powerful.
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Consider OMEMO instead of OTR, it’s much better in many ways, but your contacts have to use it as well.
https://github.com/gkdr/lurch is the plugin for Pidgin.
Such as what, would you say? I’m a half decent salesman (not by trade) but I think I’d need more to sell everybody on a change to something what seemingly ain’t broke already.
I’d really need a big improvement in noticeable ways to successfully effect a change probably.
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Actually found this:
Puri.sm endorse OMEMO as the best option themselves and see it on the roadmap.