Join chat on IRC
Table of Contents
IRC is a cool protocol that hackers all over the world have been using for decades. Many communities have a IRC channel.
1 Server
Most of the IRC channels I know are on https://freenode.net. Check the server your community uses.
2 Client
First, freenode has an online client for you. I prefer to use Emacs, and luckily Emacs comes with a nice IRC client called erc.
Start it up with M-x erc, it asks you for server
and port, just leave the default. Then for the user name you can
just type whatever you want. You actually “use” the nick name
before you register it on IRC. Once you are in freenode, you can
register your nick name by this command:
/msg NickServ REGISTER password youremail@example.com
To “login” (freenode call it “identify”):
/msg NickServ IDENTIFY nickname password
This is not really IRC protocol but a freenode protocol. You
are actually sending a message to a special user
NickServ, and the massage is REGISTER password
youremail@example.com.
3 Join a Channel
To join a channel:
/join #channel
For example:
/join #emacs
Channel names always start with #, I think.
4 Quit
Quit with
/quit
5 Other commands
You can learn other IRC commands at here.
6 Useful Tips
6.1 How to "@" people
Normally you type the person’s name and add a
:. So @cooldude xxx would be
cooldude: xxx. This is how we reply to people
specifically.
6.2 How to see chat history?
You can’t. You have to stay online to see the conversation.
You can setup a remote server to stay online and
ssh to the server to chat. But really, you can
just login and ask your question, if no one is online, just
check in some other time. You don’t need to record every
message every send to the channel.