Personally I used to use Pidgin, but since I moved my XMPP to Gajim because of OMEMO I have no need to stay tied to it necessarily. So I’m looking to expand my horizons, and I figured here’s as good a place as any to start a discussion about Linux IRC clients.
What do y’all use? Terminal, GUI, both?
Circe, because why would you ever want to leave Emacs
tmux + weechat. Also connect to it via weechat-android on my phone. Great for getting pings and quick replies while not at the desktop.
irssi or hexchat (earlier xchat) since forever. I’m one of the weird people that even paid for xchat on Windows ages ago.
I’ve never liked the clients that were just an extension in something else, like Pidgin.
Only tried issri on CLI Linux… Hexchat on windows I couldn’t eve get to connect lol. What are people using to keep IRC open, so you can look back on chats? Pretty new to it
WeeChat was my go-to, years ago.
I’m curious what keeps you on IRC and stops you migrating to Matrix?
I’m guessing it’s because IRC is proven, robust, simple, and has established communities. It’s also extensible and can be run on anonymous networks like i2p
- said as a non IRC user
Try HexChat 😉.
I’m using both, irssi and quassel.
I use a GUI, selfhosted and web based instance of The Lounge. Ive been using it for a few years now and its wonderfull. I can be connected at all times without leaving my laptop on. Before that i used Hexchat, dIRC (was a wonderful client for windows, so mist have been around 2000) and mIRC, which i think is still one of the biggest clients.
I use The Lounge, it’s a self hosted server/bouncer that you use through a web UI. That makes it so I can stay online 24/7, and can access IRC from any device including my phone. It even supports push notifications, so when someone pings me on IRC, I get notified on my phone and can go open up the client and look at my chats. It’s pretty good!
Not as lightweight as a terminal client, but keeping a Firefox tab open for it isn’t that memory hungry. Negligible when you have dozens of tabs open and a few Electron apps anyway.
Seconding this. Among all the web IRC clients I have tried, The Lounge is the best, and the experience on mobile is pretty good.
