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I've been trying to get back to IRC, but the clients seem dated for the most part. Do you have recommendations for something with a UI that feels reasonably mod

I've been trying to get back to IRC, but the clients seem dated for the most part. Do you have recommendations for something with a UI that feels reasonably modern?

daurnimator 7y ago
I use glowingbear (https://glowing-bear.org/ https://glowing-bear.org/, https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear) to connect to a weechat session running on a VPS. The setup is not non-tech-person approachable, but its generally been untouched aside from updates in this setup since 2013. For non-tech people https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ seems one of the best on offer.
simias 7y ago
Not really, I'm generally fine with "dated". I use irssi with a config file that hasn't change in a decade. Not that I think that you're wrong for wanting a more modern experience, it's clearly one of the main reasons IRC is losing traction. Some things can be solved client-side by, for instance, auto-fetching some URLs to display image links inline (although it could cause privacy concerns) but you also have limitations caused by the IRC protocol itself. For instance IRC has no notion of "replies", if you want to quote somebody you generally copy/paste their comment and put your reply at the end. That's clearly primitive and makes it hard to find the original context.
- jrockway 7y ago
  > That's clearly primitive and makes it hard to find the original context. Maybe. I am positive I miss 99% of replies (in "threads") in Slack. I always felt like the feature is designed for the case where you've already decided something, but people want to show up and bikeshed it, so they get a little area that nobody can see where they do that. Maybe that's not what it's meant for. But when I want to reply to someone, I say "@whoever, regarding foo that you were talking about earlier..." I think this is the IRC way of handling that and it seems correct to me. The reality is, sometimes you've missed your window to contribute to a conversation. No tool is going to change that.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  For the most part I just want it to be less than half-broken. And to have buttons for things that are IRC commands. In Thunderbird the compose window has white text on a white bg at the moment, for instance.
xPaw 7y ago
The Lounge (https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/) would be a good choice
FineTralfazz 7y ago
I haven't personally tried it, but I've seen other people here recommend The Lounge on past threads: https://thelounge.chat https://thelounge.chat
vertex-four 7y ago
IRCCloud is pretty modern-feeling, but is saas paid for on a subscription basis.
- Grinnz 7y ago
  Seconding IRCCloud. Great mobile app with a dedicated developer. If you subscribe you can even use it as a better Slack client.
dregin 7y ago
Weechat is king. https://github.com/weechat/weechat https://github.com/weechat/weechat
dTal 7y ago
Quassel is very nice and achieves the level of desktop integration people expect nowadays (notifications and so on). It's nicely GUIfied and it's QT so it themes nicely. It also has a core/client split so you can put the core on an always-on server somewhere. There's also an Android client, making it a pretty unified system. You can seamlessly switch between laptop and phone.

I've been trying to get back to IRC, but the clients seem dated for the most part. Do you have recommendations for something with a UI that feels reasonably modern?

daurnimator 7y ago

I use glowingbear (https://glowing-bear.org/ https://glowing-bear.org/, https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear) to connect to a weechat session running on a VPS. The setup is not non-tech-person approachable, but its generally been untouched aside from updates in this setup since 2013. For non-tech people https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ seems one of the best on offer.

simias 7y ago

Not really, I'm generally fine with "dated". I use irssi with a config file that hasn't change in a decade. Not that I think that you're wrong for wanting a more modern experience, it's clearly one of the main reasons IRC is losing traction. Some things can be solved client-side by, for instance, auto-fetching some URLs to display image links inline (although it could cause privacy concerns) but you also have limitations caused by the IRC protocol itself. For instance IRC has no notion of "replies", if you want to quote somebody you generally copy/paste their comment and put your reply at the end. That's clearly primitive and makes it hard to find the original context.

jrockway 7y ago
> That's clearly primitive and makes it hard to find the original context. Maybe. I am positive I miss 99% of replies (in "threads") in Slack. I always felt like the feature is designed for the case where you've already decided something, but people want to show up and bikeshed it, so they get a little area that nobody can see where they do that. Maybe that's not what it's meant for. But when I want to reply to someone, I say "@whoever, regarding foo that you were talking about earlier..." I think this is the IRC way of handling that and it seems correct to me. The reality is, sometimes you've missed your window to contribute to a conversation. No tool is going to change that.
CalRobert 7y ago
For the most part I just want it to be less than half-broken. And to have buttons for things that are IRC commands. In Thunderbird the compose window has white text on a white bg at the moment, for instance.

xPaw 7y ago

The Lounge (https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/) would be a good choice

FineTralfazz 7y ago

I haven't personally tried it, but I've seen other people here recommend The Lounge on past threads: https://thelounge.chat https://thelounge.chat

vertex-four 7y ago

IRCCloud is pretty modern-feeling, but is saas paid for on a subscription basis.

Grinnz 7y ago
Seconding IRCCloud. Great mobile app with a dedicated developer. If you subscribe you can even use it as a better Slack client.

dregin 7y ago

Weechat is king. https://github.com/weechat/weechat https://github.com/weechat/weechat

dTal 7y ago

Quassel is very nice and achieves the level of desktop integration people expect nowadays (notifications and so on). It's nicely GUIfied and it's QT so it themes nicely. It also has a core/client split so you can put the core on an always-on server somewhere. There's also an Android client, making it a pretty unified system. You can seamlessly switch between laptop and phone.