If you are a Linux user then odds are that you have been on IRC and chatted on Freenode irc network.

What is IRC:

IRC is internet relay chat, which is an protocol for text based conversations. This use to be the standard way to get support before forums and Slack existed. Please don’t ask these guys on the video: What is IRC?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ&t=34s

How does IRC work?

IRC is a pretty simple text based protocol that you can read more about here:

Or go read a bunch of RFC’s :)

Um i can’t remember where I got this sorry.

How is IRC used in the modern world?

People used to run IRSSI on their servers as they could SSH in and continue where they left off, by using tmux or irssi.

Here is quite a cool article that shows someone’s preferred irssi client setup:

http://www.antonfagerberg.com/blog/my-perfect-irssi-setup/

Here is a pic of my temporary setup that I just quickly setup for this article:

Why use IRC?

For years and years before Slack existed, if you were too impatient to wait for a reply on stackoverflow.com then IRC was the goto for instant support for Free and Open source projects.

I’ve made quite a few really useful contacts online that I check in with from time to time, they help me if I get stuck with certain things and vice versa.

Freenode:

Freenode became quite famous back in 2010 due to something rather weird that occurred by some real hard core trolls. The trolls known as the GNAA (you can google it if you wanna know what it stands for) were able to exploit a bug in Firefox to get thousands of users to join channels on Freenode and flood them with weird messages. You can read about the attack here:

Freenode is a really cool IRC network solely dedicated to running channels for open source projects and allowing users of the open source project to talk to each other and get support for that given open source software.

For example if you have Docker questions then you can just connect to freenode and ask your question on the #docker IRC channel on freenode.

Connecting to freenode and joining a channel is as simple as:

/server -ssl irc.freenode.net /nick somenick /join #docker

For most channels on Freenode you will need to register your username and authenticate. This is probably to prevent similiar attacks like the one that happened in 2010. I don’t know if you can call it an attack, it was probably more of a giant prank.

More on attack:

https://news.softpedia.com/news/Firefox-Bug-Used-to-Harass-an-Entire-IRC-Network-133613.shtml

Which IRC Client to use?

You use to be able to use Slack for IRC, but you no longer are able to:

You can try one of these: