XDCC > Torrent. Just sayin’.

I keep a client running out of habit. All my regular hangs are pretty dead. People left their clients running out of habit. One line per month is a busy month.

A small group of friends have moved to a self-hosted matrix server. That’s more active.

I think there’s just a paradigm change. IRC used to be pretty synchronous. You’d chat while you were connected, and not really multitask and zone out to do other stuff.

Today people expect messaging to be asynchronous. You get your push notifications and deal with it when you have the time.

And for those people using IRC: which network(s) do you use? I have fuzzy memories of EFnet and DALnet being big, but I’ve been away from IRC for a long time.

Edit: Holy shit, I just logged into a DALnet channel I frequented in the late 90’s and a bunch of the same users are still there! It’s like a time capsule!

I’ve been IRC for nearly 30 years and I still host my own server for the few friends that are also still going there. We were traditionally all going on Undernet but there’s been massive attacks about 15 years ago and we migrated on our own network.

I also host a web client called The Lounge so that we can view and paste images/mp4s/mp3s directly on channels, with previews, push notifications, and logging.

We made the switch from plain text to web clients a few years ago and it really helped to modernize the experience and keep IRC relevant for us. If it was still only text I may have moved to another protocol. At one point I tried installing a Matrix server to replace IRC but found it too complex for simple chat and just stuck with web clients, like The Lounge or Convos.

Daily by abstraction.

Twitch chat and discord text channels are pretty much IRC in disguise.

https://xkcd.com/1782 for some

It’s the predecessor of discord etc. So if you are old enough and nerdy enough… I am only old enough ;-)

(In even earlier times, there was “finger” for personal status messages - googel it if you don’t know it)

I know Alpine Linux uses IRC for development. https://alpinelinux.org/community/

I go there from time to time when I have an issue I can’t figure out myself.

It’s mature and simple which is why I believe it’s used more often by developers.

If you’re running the latest Debian (or even the stable one), IRC is still a good place to go for support. And there is an electronics channel on Libera that was still big last time I checked. If you don’t know which IC to use for your project someone there will probably know. I would stick around there if I were still into electronics.

Also, IRC is just more relaxing by being text-only. No flashy avatars, pictures, reactions, and for most parts no gamification.

Oh damn, this used to be my main chat protocol back in the day ( started using it in 1997 or so).

I remember how difficult it was to be an op on the channel, similar to how discord is how I guess, or this service that would allow your user to always be connected, but having away status, even when logged off (some service the would run an instance with your user I guess, to which you had to register).

I use it occasionally. The problem is, most of my communities are on Discord. Plus, rooms not being permanent on the server means that bots have to be hosted by someone, plus there’s a severe lack of effective logging.

Basically, all the problems that later chat programs solve, I keep missing on IRC. I want persistent rooms. I want federation & bridging between servers. I need trustworthy remote logs. Since I know a lot of that has been handled client-side, I don’t understand why it can’t be implemented server-side with IRCv4 or whatever is next.

I’ve used it occasionally to chat with fellow NetHack players.

NetHack. Tracker support. Very occasionally, ebooks and audiobooks I couldn’t find elsewhere.

Daily user, works just as well as discord, etc, no middle man (self hosted for many use cases).