IRC

I have tried to use Signal and Discord but I cannot. The UI is very bad (clumsy semi-web). In addition one of them (I think Signal) does not have feature to delete history... Skype is EOL. ICQ was good but abandoned for some reason.
 
Last edited:
you can try to use xmpp via, for instance, conversation (on android) or profanity (tui i use on freebsd)
the only issue from a comfort point of view is that both (or more) party need to be online for the messages not to disappear into dev/null
there is OMEMO encryption on it.
i chose draugr.de as a server personally.
hopes this helps... at least as a different point of view.
 
The liberachat #freebsd has 746 people there right now. It's often quiet, however, as are many of the irc channels, much quieter than they were, say, even 10 years ago. There used to be a lot more idle chatter, people in the FreeBSD channel being there, often just to socialize. That's my impression and it may be an old guy just thinking Ahh, the world was friendlier back then. Shucks I remember when slack first came out. "You can still use your IRC client, Slack supports it!" Then, after a lot of people had gotten on slack, no more suppport for weechat and irssi, though weeslack has made it fairly easy for me to use weechat with it. (There were similar things for irssi, but they've stopped working for me). But if you have FreeBSd questions, and get on #freebsd at libera, you can probably get answers.
 
hern42 said:
the only issue from a comfort point of view is that both (or more) party need to be online for the messages not to disappear into dev/null
Click to expand...
With XMPP (aka Jabber) you can very well send encrypted messages while the recipient is offline. See XEP-0160: Best Practices for Handling Offline Messages.
XMPP-Features are defined in XEPs. Not all XEPs are implemented server side or on the client. You may need to verify if a feature (XEP) is provided by the server(s) or if it needs to be activated on the client in use. I do happily use net-im/gajim. If you want to talk/test with me feel free to send me a private conversation message with your XMPP/Jabber-address.
 
25 years ago you went to a channel, asked something and got immediately an answer.

Today people enters the channel and it was all, no exchange.

That is why a forum is better. USENET is unfortunately not very alive.
 
6502 said:
IRC was popular ~25 years ago. Is it still used and if not - why?
Click to expand...
Ah, the good old IRC days... I lived them.. one of the biggest moments in my early work experiences was getting approval from the big boss himself that I was allowed to keep an IRC window open during Friday, also because I also used it to talk about tech (Linux / Unix) in addition to some more personal chattering.

A very popular IRC client at that time was Epic (irc/epic4), a pretty cool client which provided many themes and scripts that made the experience a lot better. However... configuring this critter was always a bit tricky. And then, all of a sudden we got IRSSI (irc/irssi) which pretty much literally took the scene by storm. It didn't take long before many (most?) of my IRC friends switched to IRSSI. One of the most important features of IRSSI is Perl scripting which allows you to do almost anything you'd like. Not to mention that its configuration options were also a lot more extensive and better accessible; there's almost nothing which you can't configure on the fly.

And of course we also had the servers... ircu which was mostly used on UnderNet. It was a good server but also had its flaws, like 'open' hostnames. In other words.. a mere /who command would be enough to find out someones originating IP adress, this obviously wasn't good. Later on they added an extra option to X (their main IRC service) so that it could cloak part of the host mask.

However, I've always been a huge fan of UnrealIRCd (irc/unreal); a very complex and extensive server which provides a ton of features; amongst which instant host cloaking (only IRC Operators can actually see hostnames). This prevented a lot of issues. It also provided more features; while most regular servers would allow you to op or voice someone this server also provided features like "half ops".

One of the more popular services for Unreal has always been Anope (irc/anope) which provided more commonly known service names like OperServ, NickServ (= register your nickname), even services for leaving memo's and bot services.

... and speaking of bots. Eggdrop immediately comes to mind. Bots which could be used to maintain control over a channel; like allowing people to op/deop themselves in case an IRC network didn't provide such services themselves.

What I always enjoyed about IRC is that it wasn't just a messaging or chat option, but it also allowed you to bring tech into the whole mix. Like I said: it was easy to run your own bot (like Eggdrop) and then configuring that to actually "do" stuff for you; thus more or less scripting your own IRC channel "services").

One thing that still makes me laugh today: IdleRPG, usually held in the channel #idlerpg. This is exactly what its name implies: as long as you idle in the channel then you'll gain "XP" and rise to the ranks. Sometimes "killing" other people (not really) and of course people would sometimes "kill" you.

Good times ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top