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?

  • luap@apollo.town
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    1 year ago

    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.

          • luap@apollo.town
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            1 year ago

            Well. There are a few places around. The big ones are places like libera.chat, oftc.net, etc. Those are HUGE though (By irc standards) so sometimes it can get overwhelming trying to find somewhere to just hang out and chat. Slightly smaller servers tend to work better as an introduction, at least to me. Things like tilde.chat which has a clearly defined main chat area, and a lot of more niche chats for things you might be interested in.

            Generally, if you get started on one server, and make some friends, join a few channels, find some interests, you’ll find your servers expanding. It’s a large enough ecosystem to have a LOT of people, but small enough that you’ll bump in to people you already know if you try multiple servers. Which is nice.

  • OverfedRaccoon 🦝@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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 what whatever illicit goods you wanted via chat commands.

    I’m not really sure what people use IRC for now, but it’s still active.

  • Digital Mark@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    xkcd.com/1782/

    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.

      • darkstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Sky Cato@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      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

  • MrGerrit@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • freamon@endlesstalk.org
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    1 year ago

    Well, personally I use IRC to steal media, but I realise that’s not why you’re asking.

    I suppose the reason people might use it for chat is that it’s been around a long time, so there’s clients (with endless plugins) that do exactly what people want, and it’s all simple, text-based often unencrypted stuff, so it’s easy to write bots for (that might notify you of something, for example)

  • Acid@startrek.website
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • American_Jesus@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I don’t use it for a longtime, but if it works why change it. It good for realtime chat, you can use it on a potato and some. Matrix chats also have IRC bridges so all can be on same chat.

  • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    IRC is a simple interface that’s been well supported for more than two decades, folks have a huge selection of apps or web interfaces they can choose from. No it doesn’t directly support sharing pictures or anything like that, but for most chats all you need is basic text. It’s easy to build up a quick bot in several different programming languages and I’ve even written up self-running multiplayer games.

    I considered switching to something like discord for the chats I host but it didn’t look like they allow that although there are some open source alternatives. What’s the deal with Matrix? Is there a reason you like it better? Can you easily set up a self-hosted server for it? (And for that matter, are there any connectors to link it to an existing IRC chat to allow for a smooth transition period?)

    • NaN@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      IRC is so simple you can connect with a telnet client.

      Matrix does have bridges to other services, including IRC, but I haven’t really gotten into matrix either. IRC has always been good enough.

    • OverfedRaccoon 🦝@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’ve heard Matrix is closer to Discord, but not quite as feature-rich - with the tradeoff being open source. I joined the Matrix room for Jerboa development just to follow along, and then my home Matrix instance has a chat it threw me in when first logging into Element that I let roll but mostly ignore. I have no idea what I’m doing or even why I really joined, other than to check it out for myself to see what it’s all about.

      • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        It would certainly be nice to be able to directly share pics or multimedia content. I’m guessing Matrix supports that but I need to do some reading to see how much control I have over that. Like some rooms would want that but a common lounge room I would want to keep text-only. I suppose it’s time to start doing some reading…

    • randomguy2323@lemmy.kevitprojects.comOP
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      1 year ago

      Well Beeper is using Matrix and yes you can self host a Matrix Server. I haven’t tries IRC before might give it a try but I wanted to know what people mainly use for. Thank you for sharing :)

      • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been doing some reading since this topic came up, and am currently working on building a VM with a home server. It certainly has potential for my purposes! I already have several questions so I figured just setting one up so I could play with it from the admin side would be the easiest way to see what I can do with it.

  • CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    I’ve made several friends on IRC and gotten acquainted with a lot of people with whom I want to remain in contact. There’s no point in moving to another platform, especially since, as u/luap@apollo.town pointed out, it “just works” and there’s a client for it on every platform you can think of. I have my own IRC bouncer (ZNC) set up on a server of mine. I have it tailored to my preferences, set it up to log all the conversations I care about across multiple servers, and I can connect to it from any device I own now or might own in the future - same exact experience on all of them.

  • jabberati@social.anoxinon.de
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    1 year ago

    @randomguy2323 I mostly use XMPP, but joining IRC channels with Biboumi just works and I enjoy that. Matrix bridges are awful in comparison. So many problems joining Matrix rooms, so I have given up on it.

  • trimmerfrost@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I don’t care if it’s irc or matrix. As long as it has my content of choice. But yeah, I would like better clients for irc on mobile