IRC – Internet Relay Chat – is a text based chat program. The 2k kids may compare this to slack, telegram chat, whatapp chat or any other instant messaging.

IRC was created by Jarkko Oikarinen in August 1988. Wow. Too old, Right?

Why it is not famous nowadays? People are telling that there are many cons compared to modern instant messaging.

These cons are real Pros of IRC. They are not bugs. They are the intended features.

Are you hearing the word IRC for the first time? Here is a quick beginners guide

https://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/irc-primer/

IRC is only Text Based Chat.

Yes. You can not add any image or video. Few servers accept file uploads. Still Text is the only preferred way of communication in IRC. Why?

• Plain Text is the God of content, always.
• It is searchable.
• Anyone can read faster
• Watching a one hour video will talk one hour time. Reading its transcription will take quarter of its time.
• On server side maintenance, it will be great headache to keep on adding the storage to keep all the images, files, videos. Ask the admins, who manages RocketChat, Mattermost, Mastodon Instances. They will tell the pains of keep on increasing the hard disk spaces. The IRC server admins will live a peacefull life and can keep the history for decades.
• If you can not explain anything on text, even videos wont help for many.

IRC is not keeping the history of chats

IRC simulates the realtime chatroom like a meeting room. If you are late to a meeting room, you miss the spoken things. You can read minutes and know what was spoken.

Similarly, IRC is only realtime chat. You can not read the previous chats like you do in telegram like instant messengers. Even in modern we dont read all the history of chats. Imagine, in a morning, a chat room having 200 unread message. What do you do? Just skip all the messages and mark them read. Thats life. IRC knew this 30 ago.

What If I want history?

As all the interaction is happening as plain text, anyone can share the chat history online as blogpost, pastebin or github gist. Ask any fellow mates to export them and read in leisure.

That’s too much work for me to ask for a chat history

Well. There are bots and bots and bots for IRC. Check for any logging bot and add to your channel. Host the bot yourself or use this bot.   https://ircbot.comm-central.org:8080/  Add this bot to your channel and read all the chatlog on their website.

Who are using IRC still?

Most of the Free/Open Source software are having IRC Channels to provide free support. You can interact with the original developers of the software there. Anyone can create a channel, invite friends, hangout and have fun there.

Rules, Rules, Rules

It seems there are few rules to chat in IRC Channels. It depends on each channel. To maintain  goodness, there are rules everywhere. Even in Roads, to avoid accidents, we have to follow rules. There are mailing list rules. Similarly, there are common IRC Rules. Read here for common IRC meeting Rules https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_IRC#Meeting_Protocol

There are many commands to learn

Yes. As everything is via only text, we have to give few commands to use the IRC. There are no “Join/Mute/Leave/Kick” buttons. They are just commands. Check your instant messenger GUI. You will be clicking so many buttons to interact. They are the original commands here.

I have to remember people by there NickName. Why cant we connect with their phone number?

Welcome to the world of Privacy. By giving all your contact’s phone numbers to your instant messenger like WhatsApp, you are selling all our privacy. Do you get frequent SPAM phone calls from all banks,credit cards? We did not get these on IRC times. IRC keeps all your privacy. You dont have to reveal your name, sex, country.

What if I want to chat with someone instantly? He is not there in the IRC Channel? In instant messenger, I leave him a message, on next day, he will see and reply.

IRC respects your offline life. You dont need to be online 24/7. IRC is like going to office and being in a meeting room. Are you in meeting room or a tea shop gang or friends gathering 24/7 ? How are you connecting with them when they are not around? Yes. You make calls or send a message. You choose another medium to connect with them and wait. Do the same here. If you have some query. Posted in IRC. No one replies or the persons who can reply are not there in the Channel. Then ask the same on respective mailing list or stackoverflow like forums. Check the IRC logs next day, you might got answers. You can quickly search over text to get your conversations.

If someone is not there online, it seems he is enjoying life in realtime. Let them enjoy it. Ask for their available time and interact only on that time.

Meet.Jit.si, BigBlueButton,Zoom, Skype, Facebook Live, YouTube Live are useful to meet people, discuss and for any training. Can we do the same on IRC?

Yes. We can do all the things in IRC too. There are tons and tons of training happening over IRC. DPGLug is conducting Training on Free Software from 2009 on every summer. You can read all the logs here https://dgplug.org/irclogs/

We had monthly IRC meetings on Tamil Computing around 2015. You can read all the logs here  https://tamilirc.wordpress.com/

Anyone can read/skim these logs quickly. If I share a youtube channel or podcasts full of 100s of hours of content, how long will you watch? It depends on the need. The same applies for IRC also. But it easy and quick to read text.

Can I use IRC on the go with Mobile?

Yes. There are many mobile clients. IRCCloud’s web client and mobile client are modern and neat. I use their free plan. There are tons of clients available for all OS. Explore and find your lovable pair, yourself.

What if I want to read all the history?

You can setup IRC bouncer software like ZNC, or connect with a matrix channel or pay for IRCCloud.com like services. https://thelounge.chat/ seems a better self hostable IRC web client. Install it in a server or raspberry pi. If you want to be away from propitiatory software, for which you are the product, you have to host yourself or pay to some service providers. Or simply enable a free logging bot and read from their website.

I can talk faster than typing.

But people can read faster than hearing or seeing any video. If you want to reach more people, type the content in IRC or a blog post.

What about Matrix/Riot?

Matrix/Riot.im seems a upgraded IRC with all the bells and whistles of other instant messengers. They can be connected with IRC using bots. To and Fro both way communications are seamless. But it allows multimedia content, exporting all the content for public view is still tough, high maintenance tasks for server admins.

Want to discuss with 1000s of people same time? Use IRC

All the modern video chat services, YouTube, Facebook Live sessions take high bandwidth. Not everyone on the world have the bandwidth to connect with a video chat. Most of the video calls are spending time with “Am I audible? Do you see my screen? I can not see the screen. Stop the Noice” etc like discussions.

We dont have a 100s of people participating free video call service yet. You have to pay a lot for Zoom like services, just to hear the above voices and see blur faces of participants.

Instead, call for a meeting over IRC. Follow few meeting guidelines and all the meeting is done with low noise. Even anyone can connect with 2G or below bandwidth network.

Ok.Ok.Ok Stop this marketing for IRC

Few final thoughts.

1. IRC server is self hostable. irc.libera.chat, irc.oftc.net are few major free servers available to create a channel
2. Respect other people’s time. Video calls take all the participants time. Text chats are quick and respecting time.
3. Text chat is very minimalist. Enjoy the peacefulness of a IRC meeting.
4. Not all trainings need a video chat. If something is really important to demonstrate as a video, record a screencast, upload online and ask all to watch.
5. Text is great way to learn things. Remember, we still use text books, tutorials, documentation, wikipedia to learn many things. Videos can help only as supporting materials.

I will be available at #ilugc and #kaniyam at irc.libera.chat on weekdays on daytimes.

I will plan for few text based training on any free software and announce here soon.

Thanks to ShakthiKannan, Mohan of Indian Linux Users Group, Chennai and Kushal of DGPLug for inspiring me on using IRC.

Add your comments or experience with IRC here.