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.
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 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.
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
Because matrix is slow and xmpp is dead
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.
For anyone reading along: That’s called hexchat these days.
Matrix is bloated, eating VPS resources and it’s tied to Israeli Intel. Xmpp is better than bloated matrix. Besides I don’t trust matrix very much. Most of users use main matrix instance and don’t bother to spread the servers to avoid centralization
