Irssi all the way
Same. I used mIRC back in the 90’s, but ever since I started dabbling with servers I preferred to have an irssi client running inside a screen session somewhere. Allowed me to catch up on things that happened while I was AFK, as well as provide some continuity while I was on the move and/or on a dodgy connection.
Unfortunately it’s practically unusable for my use case, which is talking in CJK channels on non-UTF8 servers (when the channel name also has such characters), because recode support has been broken for 20 years.
Weechat. Terminal based, flexible scripting system using a handful of languages, still actively developed, and I can make it work the way I want it to work.
Seconded. Weechat and Gomuks for matrix chat.
Some easy display rules, and a couple of plugins and it’s perfect.
You know, I wish I could enjoy IRC - or chatrooms in general. But I just struggle with them. Forums and their ilk, I get. I check in on them and see what’s been posted since I last visited, and reply to anything that motivates me to do so. Perhaps I’ll even throw a post up myself once in a while.
But with IRC, Matrix, Discord, etc, I just feel like I only ever enter in the middle of an existing conversation. It’s fine on very small rooms where it’s almost analagous to a forum because there’s little enough conversation going on that it remains mostly asynchronous. But larger chatrooms are just a wall of flowing conversation that I struggle to keep up with, or find an entry point.
Anyway - to answer the actual question, I use something called “The Lounge” which I host on my VPS. I like it because it remains online even when I am not, so I can atleast view some of the history of any conversation I do stumble across when I go on IRC. I typically just use the web client that comes with it.
I feel the same way. I don’t feel like hanging around for someone else’s conversation to end so I can actually get what the fuck is happening.
Is mIRC still a thing? Do people still use it? Gosh I feel old.
I was gonna say this is my favorite, with IRCn on top. It’s been a while since I connected. Is EFNet still around?
irssi. No explanation necessary
The Lounge. Very convenient to use.
Already coming up close to 10 years of The Lounge! Really gets the job done nicely as long as you don’t hate webapps. By far the least broken option for mobile unless you go IRCCloud.
I use Quassel hosted on my server.
Is IRC still that popular? I mean it’s all Discord and Matrix etc these days (not saying that’s a good thing, I f’in hate Discord)
What kind of channels are you in if I may ask?
IRC’s not as popular as in its heyday, and while once it was the main choice for multi-playing gaming chat (Quakenet et al), that’s largely gone elsewhere, but it’s still very good for certain technical channels.
IRC has also proved to be remarkably resistent to commercialisation, mostly due to the users. Even when one of the biggest networks, Freenode, got taken over by a drug addled mentalist Reference who started insisting all all kinds of strange things, the users just upped sticks and created a new network. A bit of fuss, but the important stuff stayed the same and it’s continued much as before as a new network, Librenet.
IRC still seems to be pretty active in piracy communities. At least most of the private trackers I’m on host an IRC instance.
It is. It’s obscure enough for the normies to stay away. Which is its main feature
I am still active in some private irc servers. The communities haven’t changed much since the golden era of irc.
senpai
The one I wrote myself. Not because its any better ha ha. Its pretty fun to work on it though.
Irssi. It’s extensible and stable, been using it for years.
I run irssi on a Raspberry Pi. It has everything I need.
Do I have to self host it to make it work or can I just install it on my machine
You can install it on any machine. It’s just a terminal IRC client. I run it on a small home server with
screenso that it’s always on.
Self hosted ‘The Lounge’ is great.
Yes TheLounge is fantastic but I switched to Convos these days because it’s lighter weight and I somehow manage to overrun my disk much less often :)
Twitch dot tv
Quassel, self-hosted.