I've been happily using irssi for several years now, but I know a lot of people who used HexChat, and I used it in the past, along with XChat before it. IRC is

I've been happily using irssi for several years now, but I know a lot of people who used HexChat, and I used it in the past, along with XChat before it. IRC is pretty simple, so I imagine HexChat will keep working fine for years to come. It may just miss out on some IRCv3 features, and in the worst case some vulnerabilities could go unfixed.