While many hard-core Linux people use pure command-line IRC clients like irssi I’ve always liked X-Chat. X-Chat is available for Linux and Windows however its not free.
I just recently discovered the ultimate IRC client which is actually based off of X-Chat and is fully free and Open Source, called HexChat.
It looks identical to X-Chat and in fact I was able to copy over the contents of the ~/.xchat2 config directory from a Linux backup over to a Windows system and have all my settings, logs, preferences, etc. restored.
I guess this is an appropriate time to state how lamentable it is that IRC is not more commonly used than it is. IRC and Usenet are two things which are *extremely* well-designed communication infrastructures and are still better than most contemporary alternatives.
IRC is still heavily used by tech people involved in software projects and for things like application and OS support. There are also other niches such as anime fans.
Its sad to think how the Internet has in a major way failed to be what I think it was supposed to be. I also do not think that such a failure was just incidental or arbitrary.
Perhaps one day I’ll write about how the Internet is supposed to be and how significantly different our world would be if it were that way.
Sadly, all this bullshit conniving/striving/greed-plotting BS which generates huge amounts of cash is only actually bankrupting the world and shortchanging us from the true interconnected world we deserve.
People call all this BS innovation but it is precisely because there is this type of faux, BS innovation that in fact we are deprived of something much richer and much better. In other words, the deprivation of the way the world deserves to be interconnected is enabled by the conniving/striving/greed-plotting BS.
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