IRCd service (2024)

Seeing hexchat always gives me a pang of nostalgia for hours spent as a teen on various IRC channels. I know that even if I went back to some of those servers I wouldn't be able to recapture the same "magic" since it was primarily the people there (and besides, those people are largely reachable on slightly more modern services these days), but I do miss the simplicity of IRC as a protocol and the massive variety of clients and interfaces.

Maybe matrix will recapture some of that platform-agnosticism? I haven't used it in a while and the general sentiment around the protocol seems vaguely negative these days (at least in channels like HN).

IRC is still around. HexChat is unmaintained, but still works for now.

the main complaints against Matrix atm seems to be that we have made heavy weather of the migration from 1.0 to 2.0 (“either you get a slow client or a fast but incomplete client”)… or that Element has had to focus on building stuff for govts rather than irc-style communities in order to get sustainable. (see also https://gist.github.com/ara4n/190ad712965d0f06e17f508d1a45b5...). Both problems could be much worse, and we had the annual Matrix Conference a few weeks ago which was a great success (https://element.io/blog/the-matrix-conference-a-seminal-mome...), so I suspect/hope the negative sentiment will pass.

Libera.chat, EFNET, and such are stil there. Ditto with the SDF IRC server, the ones today at the tildeverse...

True geeks and nerds never left.

There are nice Jabber/XMPP servers out there too.

I recently started using IRC again (I joined a small channel because of a random event). Surprisingly the magic is still there for me.

>besides, those people are largely reachable on slightly more modern services these days

The thing is, people are NOT reachable on IRC in general. They join when they wake up (or return from school, or return from work). When they leave you can't contact them (and you can criticise/praise them freely if you want). Sometimes a new person joins and never returns again. Sometimes they join tomorrow, the day after, and become a regular. Other times someone starts joining less and less frequently, then one day leaves and never returns.

People say "hi" when joining and "bye" when leaving.

I'm general, I realized this is much more similar to talking with real people than modern groupchats. Of course this is just a protocol, and nowadays this behavior is just a choice (everyone can install a mobile client and stay always online. Even back then it was possible with a bouncer). But I'm surprised how invested I became in this micro-community, in a way i never would on a discord server.

I started using IRC when I was 13. I’m 39 now, and it never lost its magic.

While the rest of the internet has turned into some weird corporate thing, IRC is still a nice play for us nerds to hang out.

LONG LIVE LIBERA

irssi is still maintained. :P

WeeChat supremacy! (I kinda miss irssi…)

"-nocap"

Maybe that's how we get the new generation into IRC!

I suspect the terribly generic name "Matrix" isn't helping. Guess what's #1 in Google when you search for Matrix, IRC and Discord.

Yup, we're #3 behind the film and the hair company. Doesn't seem too bad; meanwhile Element is #1, terrifyingly, at least for my geoip.

#4 in mine, but you're not even 3rd page in my mom's phone (I stopped 3rd page, not sure when you'll show up)

Discord (which is your mainstream competitor) is #1 in both even if it's also a terribly generic name.

I couldn't be happier if you dethroned Discord.

EDIT: Element is 3rd place in my mom's phone. Quite an achievement!