There are many large Freenode channels that don't appear to be dying any time soon, like #bash, #archlinux, ##linux, etc. (Though, just because they're large an

There are many large Freenode channels that don't appear to be dying any time soon, like #bash, #archlinux, ##linux, etc. (Though, just because they're large and not dying doesn't mean they're worth hanging out in. :) ) As a tip, on Freenode, you can message the Alis bot to list channels: /msg alis list *linux* The reply from Alis will include how many users are in channels whose names match linux. If it has >500 users, it probably isn't going anywhere any time soon. (You can do this for other topics that interest you, of course.)