I am very new into this chat applications and read about IRC and Matrix. Matrix seems its more new and modern. So I just wonder what’s the reason you are still using IRC?
cos irc just works. It worked just fine 20 years ago. It worked 20 ish years before that. In 20 more years it’ll still work.
Any idiot with some time and a computer can throw up an ircd and host a server for people to chat on. Every other chat program either requires some random company to host it, or a much deeper knowledge of computers and software.
The clients are available for every system around. From tiny little simple single connection clients, to massive complex graphical systems. You want to chat on plan9? There’s a client. An ancient amstrad cpc? There’s a client. (That one might be a bit more challenging) Android, Linux, Windows, Mac? All of them have clients, most of them multiple.
I will say, I like Matrix, I like XMPP, I am not a huge fan of any of the chat clients with a single point of failure like discord or teams or whatever. But IRC is still my favorite, and probably will be forever.
I just have it setup the way I want.
Thanks for sharing!
I feel like I am going to need to dig my old tmux/screen setup out, and my irssi terminal configurations.
irssi
Come on in! It’s still just as wild and wonderful as it ever was!
Any suggestions where to start?
Well. There are a few places around. The big ones are places like libera.chat, oftc.net, etc. Those are HUGE though (By irc standards) so sometimes it can get overwhelming trying to find somewhere to just hang out and chat. Slightly smaller servers tend to work better as an introduction, at least to me. Things like tilde.chat which has a clearly defined main chat area, and a lot of more niche chats for things you might be interested in.
Generally, if you get started on one server, and make some friends, join a few channels, find some interests, you’ll find your servers expanding. It’s a large enough ecosystem to have a LOT of people, but small enough that you’ll bump in to people you already know if you try multiple servers. Which is nice.
Very interesting! I don’t have that many tech friends just regular friends.
I think I will work on setting it up again tomm.
I miss having a terminal window open with my irc client.
I’ll just have to go re-remember how to setup federation, linked instances, and all of that jazz…
I don’t think I’ve been on IRC since 2006ish. It was the gathering ground for my favorite private torrent tracker at the time. We had internet radio and all kinds of fun stuff.
Before that, like back in the AOL days, there were chat-based filesharing server rooms, where you would get a list of files, then request whatever illicit goods you wanted via chat commands.
I’m not really sure what people use IRC for now, but it’s still active.
People still do that on IRC actually. The only ones I know of off the top of my head are for ebooks though.
Thank you for sharing :)
Well, personally I use IRC to steal media, but I realise that’s not why you’re asking.
I suppose the reason people might use it for chat is that it’s been around a long time, so there’s clients (with endless plugins) that do exactly what people want, and it’s all simple, text-based often unencrypted stuff, so it’s easy to write bots for (that might notify you of something, for example)
You can’t steal, only copy digital things but I know what you mean __
That’s literally not theft
How do you steal media if its not encrypted? :\
Blatantly.
Matrix, XMPP, etc. will all pass and be forgotten.
IRC will never die, and the channels on it are often useful. I suggest starting with libera.chat
Find a client you like. I’m on Mac, I tolerate LimeChat, Adium is “better” but I don’t use any other chats, which is what it’s for. There’s plenty of options. ircii is the classic.
There really is an XKCD for everything
Anybody remember BitchX and the various scripts for mIRC? '90s IRC was edgy.
I fondly remember all the functionality Polaris offered, and because piracy was a big part of my IRC use, also Fserve. I made some extensions of my own to help with the typical IRCOP duties. Good times.
Nope xmpp is still going strong. I’ve been using xmpp over whtsapp for a while and I like it so much. You can even make a voice and video call. The best thingis it is federated just like fediverse
I don’t use it for a longtime, but if it works why change it. It good for realtime chat, you can use it on a potato and some. Matrix chats also have IRC bridges so all can be on same chat.
When you said you can use it in a potato you mean like self hosting ? Yes I heard about the bridge :)
Hosted or client, there’s IRC clients for everything, even on a Commodore 64 (https://csdb.dk/release/?id=197138)
Oh thats cool , how can I start on IRC?
Start by choosing a network, try something like Libera Chat https://libera.chat/
You have some suggestions for IRC clients on their page, you can even use one on the browser. Browse the channels available, join, chat
Literally on a potato. It requires near zero computing power.
In my younger years I used it to pirate stuff and back when I played counter strike, it was a requirement to have a channel for your clan to participate in matches on clanbase.org (rip)
Fuck I feel old… Good times.
I used to play counter strike too , but never got the chance to use IRC. Thank you for sharing :)
I used IRC daily religiously for 15 years, but around 2011 I just stopped and never got back into using it. The client of choice was Xchat.
Xchat with its sleek tab interface was the bomb
For anyone reading along: That’s called hexchat these days.
Misread this as ICQ and was going to say “because of ‘uh oh’; always because of ‘uh oh’”
IRC is a simple interface that’s been well supported for more than two decades, folks have a huge selection of apps or web interfaces they can choose from. No it doesn’t directly support sharing pictures or anything like that, but for most chats all you need is basic text. It’s easy to build up a quick bot in several different programming languages and I’ve even written up self-running multiplayer games.
I considered switching to something like discord for the chats I host but it didn’t look like they allow that although there are some open source alternatives. What’s the deal with Matrix? Is there a reason you like it better? Can you easily set up a self-hosted server for it? (And for that matter, are there any connectors to link it to an existing IRC chat to allow for a smooth transition period?)
IRC is so simple you can connect with a telnet client.
Matrix does have bridges to other services, including IRC, but I haven’t really gotten into matrix either. IRC has always been good enough.
I’ve heard Matrix is closer to Discord, but not quite as feature-rich - with the tradeoff being open source. I joined the Matrix room for Jerboa development just to follow along, and then my home Matrix instance has a chat it threw me in when first logging into Element that I let roll but mostly ignore. I have no idea what I’m doing or even why I really joined, other than to check it out for myself to see what it’s all about.
It would certainly be nice to be able to directly share pics or multimedia content. I’m guessing Matrix supports that but I need to do some reading to see how much control I have over that. Like some rooms would want that but a common lounge room I would want to keep text-only. I suppose it’s time to start doing some reading…
Well Beeper is using Matrix and yes you can self host a Matrix Server. I haven’t tries IRC before might give it a try but I wanted to know what people mainly use for. Thank you for sharing :)
I’ve been doing some reading since this topic came up, and am currently working on building a VM with a home server. It certainly has potential for my purposes! I already have several questions so I figured just setting one up so I could play with it from the admin side would be the easiest way to see what I can do with it.
My irssi configuration is exactly how I want it for about two decades now. Why change something good?
Holy shit. That’s a program I’ve not heard on a long long time.
May I ask what do you mainly use it for? Chatting? Group Chatting?
Both. Some work chats also are still IRC, but unfortunately less than they used to.
I also bridge whatever is possible into IRC via bitlbee. Unfortunately not that useful anymore, but looks like there’s now an active project to bridge matrix again, which probably can take over.
I’ve made several friends on IRC and gotten acquainted with a lot of people with whom I want to remain in contact. There’s no point in moving to another platform, especially since, as u/luap@apollo.town pointed out, it “just works” and there’s a client for it on every platform you can think of. I have my own IRC bouncer (ZNC) set up on a server of mine. I have it tailored to my preferences, set it up to log all the conversations I care about across multiple servers, and I can connect to it from any device I own now or might own in the future - same exact experience on all of them.
If you want a middle griund between IRC and matrix check out XMPP!
@randomguy2323 I mostly use XMPP, but joining IRC channels with Biboumi just works and I enjoy that. Matrix bridges are awful in comparison. So many problems joining Matrix rooms, so I have given up on it.
Is XMPP another protocol too right? I read about that one. What’s the difference?
If you ever used twitch chat, that is IRC too
Because it just fucking works
I’d love to learn how to get started with IRC and Matrix.
I am learning about Matrix because of Beeper and Element. Beeper is an all in one app that can bridge to telegram , WhatsApp , Instagram and even iMessage on an android phone. Really good stuff happening over in Beeper.
That sounds cool
It actually is very cool look it up in Google and it will blow your mind how awesome it is.
I put myself on the waiting list. Thx
Be cautious with how much data they collect and the security implications of giving access to these services.
Here’s a thread on Beeper.
Thank you for the heads up but I will never use this app for sharing private information. Mostly memes and videos with friends.
Thunderbird is also a matrix client now!
