# IRC Clients



## Phishfry (May 29, 2017)

I am looking for a lightweight IRC client that works under Xorg.
I am looking at irc/lostirc which is a minimalist x client. I am concerned it is so old.

My question is have there been any major changes to IRC which would make unsupported clients obsolete? How about security. Can IRC do bad things to my computer generally?

I have some technical questions and want to checkout other avenues.


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## kpedersen (May 29, 2017)

As far as I know, the IRC protocol has not changed for a long time and it is unlikely it ever will.

The IRC RFC was out in 1993 (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1459.txt).

Even Microsoft Comic Chat (from Windows 95 era) still works... Really well actually, I highly recommend trying it because it is such a cool idea.

Since all the cool kids these days are using slack (which is a real shame since it is simply a single company's product), I don't believe there will ever be any new breaking features in newer IRC servers.

For my personal use, I like Irssi over ssh/terminal or Xchat when using a DE. I actually find XChat quite light compared to other desktop software these days.

Also, if you already have firefox installed, there is a chatzilla plugin for it.


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## tobik@ (May 30, 2017)

Try irc/hexchat which is an actively developed XChat fork.  XChat development has stopped a while ago AFAIK.


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## StreetDancer (May 30, 2017)

Phishfry,

I am an active IRC person and I've used IRC for more than half my life. Currently I am using XChat in LXDE, which is working fantastic. Both LXDE and XChat are lightweight, just like kpedersen mentioned. After talking with the regulars in #FreeBSD and #FreeBSD-Social , people seem to like a console version of IRC Client known as "WeeChat". I have installed it, however, I haven't had time to learn it as of yet. 

Best Regards,

Brandon


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## SirDice (May 30, 2017)

In the beginning I used X-Chat a lot, mainly because it looked and felt a lot like my old AmIRC. Now I mostly use the irc/irssi/sysutils/tmux combo.


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## Beeblebrox (Jun 2, 2017)

I wanted an IRC client that would (like IRC-Cloud, but free)
a) Relay answers after I left the channel  and
b) Have an Android app.
irc/quassel seems to have this, although I am far from testing it. IDK whether one must setup their own irc/quassel-core on a hosting server or whether quassel has an existing relay  that you can register with.
Quassel does have an Android app, so I assume a relay exists. Since most IRC is publicly logged anyway, privacy is an ex-parrot in this case.


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## ShelLuser (Jun 2, 2017)

Note that IRSSI is build on Perl and also allows you to extend on that using Perl making it most likely one of the most flexible IRC clients there is.


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## jrm@ (Jun 2, 2017)

A nice irc bouncer is irc/znc.  It isn't tied to any particular irc client.  I conect to it with erc, a client that works inside Emacs.


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## NivekOgre (Mar 18, 2020)

SORRY for bumping, B U T there's this VERY NICE irc called Srain , OH it would be something if some NICE HEARTED dev could port it to us...
I've compiled it on 12.1, but i'm pretty sure something's not right... It gives me an error while opening, and after closing it it keeps the process running... (i just had to patch the Makefile for it to consider gmake instead make, THEN i tried to copy the structure of /ports/irc/bitchx and comparing/editing accordingly with the Openbsd port with no success)

Just hope to touch someone's heart here. One love.


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## sigrun (Mar 19, 2020)

ii


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## zader (Mar 19, 2020)

no love for bitchX ?   nice lightweight C compiled irc with tcl scripting .. ultra powerful..


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## zirias@ (Mar 19, 2020)

zader said:


> no love for bitchX ?   nice lightweight C compiled irc with tcl scripting .. ultra powerful..


Not really .. I moved from bitchX to irssi *many* years ago and it was really an improvement  irssi is pretty lightweight as well. I especially like the irssi-proxy feature. Oh and, it actually sees new releases


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## m0nkey_ (Mar 20, 2020)

Beeblebrox said:


> I wanted an IRC client that would (like IRC-Cloud, but free)
> a) Relay answers after I left the channel  and
> b) Have an Android app.
> irc/quassel seems to have this, although I am far from testing it. IDK whether one must setup their own irc/quassel-core on a hosting server or whether quassel has an existing relay  that you can register with.
> Quassel does have an Android app, so I assume a relay exists. Since most IRC is publicly logged anyway, privacy is an ex-parrot in this case.


If you want something IRC Cloud like, then check out The Lounge. It's Node.js based. It's become my daily driver for IRC and I have it deployed on Digital Ocean VPS. Great for just using any web browser and start chatting, supports push notifications on Android too.


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## lucenera (Nov 25, 2021)

m0nkey_ said:


> If you want something IRC Cloud like, then check out The Lounge. It's Node.js based. It's become my daily driver for IRC and I have it deployed on Digital Ocean VPS. Great for just using any web browser and start chatting, supports push notifications on Android too.


I use the lounge, too. I really like it a lot. It's now running on a VPS with Ubuntu and Docker, but I'd like to switch it to FreeBSD. Can you give me some suggestions? I tried a couple of guides with jail and basically couldn't set up jail.


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## kpedersen (Nov 26, 2021)

The Lounge does look great. Though their slogan seems a little bit misguiding:



> It doesn't matter what OS you use. The Lounge just works wherever Node.js runs



Yeah, and all the following shite. Some of which are native dependencies requiring a substantial C toolchain.


```
"dependencies": {
    "bcryptjs": "2.4.3",
    "busboy": "0.3.1",
    "chalk": "4.1.2",
    "cheerio": "1.0.0-rc.10",
    "commander": "7.2.0",
    "content-disposition": "0.5.3",
    "express": "4.17.1",
    "file-type": "16.2.0",
    "filenamify": "4.2.0",
    "got": "11.8.2",
    "irc-framework": "4.11.0",
    "is-utf8": "0.2.1",
    "ldapjs": "2.3.1",
    "linkify-it": "3.0.3",
    "lodash": "4.17.21",
    "mime-types": "2.1.33",
    "node-forge": "0.10.0",
    "package-json": "6.5.0",
    "read": "1.0.7",
    "read-chunk": "3.2.0",
    "semver": "7.3.5",
    "socket.io": "3.1.2",
    "tlds": "1.216.0",
    "ua-parser-js": "0.7.30",
    "uuid": "8.3.2",
    "web-push": "3.4.5",
    "yarn": "1.22.10"
  },
```


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## jbo (Nov 26, 2021)

I use a combination of irc/znc and irc/hexchat and I am very satisfied with that.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Nov 26, 2021)

lucenera said:


> I use the lounge, too. I really like it a lot. It's now running on a VPS with Ubuntu and Docker, but I'd like to switch it to FreeBSD. Can you give me some suggestions? I tried a couple of guides with jail and basically couldn't set up jail.


I do hope that you've checked the ToS of your VPS provider thoroughly, because many explicitely ban the usage of anything IRC related on their normal machines.

The reason why is simple: flooding some IRC bot/client out of a channel by lots of traffic was quite a standard abusive script kiddy behaviour ages ago. And no shared server provider really wants to be on the receiving end of a big DDoS attack which might put them offline at whole for a while.

Running such a software without checking that is just like asking for trouble.


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## lucenera (Nov 27, 2021)

It is not IRC related, nothing is prohibited. I'm happily using ZNC on the server, which is even worse than thelounge as a risk. I guess it just depends on my level of ignorance.


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## jbo (Nov 27, 2021)

lucenera said:


> It is not IRC related, nothing is prohibited. I'm happily using ZNC on the server, which is even worse than thelounge as a risk. I guess it just depends on my level of ignorance.


_"Nothing is prohibited"_ is very unlikely to be true.

Furthermore, just because "it works" does not mean that you're allowed to do it and that you won't face trouble later on.
As hardworkingnewbie stated: _[...] that is just asking for trouble._

I would like to note that the trouble you might be facing might not be as simple as your account/service getting blocked.


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## lucenera (Nov 27, 2021)

jbodenmann said:


> _"Nothing is prohibited"_ is very unlikely to be true.
> 
> Furthermore, just because "it works" does not mean that you're allowed to do it and that you won't face trouble later on.
> As hardworkingnewbie stated: _[...] that is just asking for trouble._
> ...


It's simply not banned by my VPS provider, but I see what you mean.


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## StressTest (Aug 20, 2022)

I've tried a great number of clients but my continued favorite has been kvirc.  It's got a lot to offer and has it's own scripting language that is very much like tcl.

I haven't tried The Lounge yet so maybe I'll give that a try since many of you seem to like it.  If you haven't tried kvirc, definitely check it out, it's worth the look.

StressTest


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## scottro (Aug 20, 2022)

I prefer irssi but like too many places, my company moved to Slack, which seems to have taken the embrace, engulf, extinguish. At first you could use irssi with it, but they stopped supporting it. However, for those who prefer text based irc, there is weechat with a plugin. I have a little page on it, with a link to th project's github page at https://www.srobb.net/slackircclient.html

Note the OP asked about GUI clients but this is for people who prefer to use irssi or weechat.  As wee_slack has worked so easily, I haven't made much attempt to use irssi with slack though for using irc itself, I still tend to use irssi.


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 20, 2022)

And then, next week, someone comes out with a new client with better emojis!

Everything should be a simple as possible.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Aug 20, 2022)

Real IRC warriors don't need emojis, because they know how to write proper smiley with ASCII only!


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