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IRC Will Never Die (2021)

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Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#81

Post by Borg3 »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #16
abstractbeliefs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so funny, because this article was written at the time freenode was burning to the ground, and the article suggests that it would be very easy for everyone to move to libera if it turned out to be the better option. And that it worked so well is the point of the article! IRC is highly resilient because it's simple to set up, the clients and servers are free software and can be endlessly and independently con…

IRC is so lightweight that a single-core sub 500MHz system can host 10,000 or more connections, and did back in the day.

Remember Twisted.Dal.Net server? :) Admin of it did some magikery on his server and hosted 50k local clients!! :) And it was 2001 or so... Thats crazy :)

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#82

Post by Borg3 »

Ohh, IRC will eventually die, unfortunately. Why? When last dinosaurs like me vanish. I love IRC, I met hell of people on IRC in golden times.. 1998-2004. IRC will be always special in my hearh. I wrote IRC bots, IRC servers.

Currently, I still run my own IRC server for friends, I have syslog channel where bots are idling and msg importand/criticial messages from my infra (semi-centrliazed logging). I see no reason to move away from it.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#83

Post by wkat4242 »

Loughla wrote: post #11
wkat4242 wrote: post #2

Funny that they mention freenode because it did burn to the ground 2 years after this article. However it was reborn as Libera which is once again doing great. If you don't know the story, Google it. I don't want to drag up the past, it's better forgotten. I don't think IRC will really die, it will become a more fringey thing though. Probably more than it already is.

I would argue that IRC absolutely is already super fringe. People have memories of it, but I'm betting active use of IRC today is limited to very tech people.

It is yes but this is part of the benefit.

The internet was much better when it was limited to very techy people too. And so is hacker news for that matter.

We have a saying in the Netherlands: "When you lower the barrier the shit flows over it". It's kinda true.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#84

Post by wkat4242 »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #29
Loughla wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that IRC absolutely is already super fringe. People have memories of it, but I'm betting active use of IRC today is limited to very tech people.

But it was already kinda fringe, even back in the late 90's. People would talk on AIM or AOL chat, but it was rarer to find IRC users among the hoi polloi.

True but in the early 90s there was nothing else yet. But back then the whole internet was totally fringe of course.

Still, MIRC (as a client) was a common thing for all computer geeks until 2005-2010 or so in my circles. After that people started moving to whatsapp and the like. This includes people in the hacker/maker and game/lanparty community so very techy and niche but there it was still big back then.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#85

Post by wkat4242 »

blooalien wrote: post #48
wkat4242 wrote: post #2

Funny that they mention freenode because it did burn to the ground 2 years after this article. However it was reborn as Libera which is once again doing great. If you don't know the story, Google it. I don't want to drag up the past, it's better forgotten. I don't think IRC will really die, it will become a more fringey thing though. Probably more than it already is.

> "I don't think IRC will really die, it will become a more fringey thing though. Probably more than it already is." Like Gopher? Still out there and bein' used. Very "fringe" now though.

Gopher was already fringe in 1991 tbh. If you'd even find a gopher server it'd be already outdated in terms of info. And it makes sense. Hyperlinking was just a really really good idea, much better than a list of fixed links in a document.

The whole Gopher idea (fixed links) actually made a bit of a return on old Nokia mobile phones with "WAP" but it never really took off because it sucked so badly. I made some WAP sites at the time but it was pretty terrible. 1-bit black/white images, a very strict layout and protocol. Bleh.

When the WWW came out gopher was pretty much instantly forgotten. And don't forget the whole internet was "fringe" back then.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#86

Post by zzo38computer »

senectus1 wrote: post #25

is it still in use? I cant remember the last time I saw a reference to an active channel. Or seen it installed on any system.

I use some IRC channels on Libera IRC, and there are some people writing to most of them often enough; I also write on IRC sometimes.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#87

Post by LinuxBender »

Meekro wrote: post #77
LinuxBender wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably worth adding that IRC is so simple to stand up and requires such tiny resources there could be many independent small IRCD's running for smaller organizations and we would never know. I can't be the only one that got tired of drama from some circles of people and stood up my own semi-private nodes for a few circles of my friends. NGIRCD can be configured in less than 5 minutes counting obtaining a LetsE…

ngIRCd looks good! To be honest, these days I'm surprised that ChanServ/NickServ type stuff isn't integrated directly into the IRCd. I guess it gets complicated if you have multiple servers and they have to decide who controls services, but would simplify single-server arrangements.

Part of IRCv3's roadmap [1] is to implement integrated services. Ergo apparently has done it never tested it and Unreal has apparently developed an addon which I was unaware of. I too would like to see more services integrated into the IRC daemon.

[1] - https://ircv3.net/software/servers.html

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#88

Post by gorjusborg »

tombert wrote: post #23

Meh. I got into IRC multiple times, but I really have no desire to go back to it. The fact that I have to set up a ZNC bouncer if I want messages to show up on multiple devices kind of feels like, well, something from the 90's. I feel like Matrix is considerably less annoying, while being federated and relatively easy to set up. I'm happy enough with IRC dying.

I thought Matrix was hot garbage last time I tried it.

Modern software tries to do too much and as a result often fails to perform its main function.

IRC is pretty much the simplest solution that works. It wont be going anywhere.

Re: IRC Will Never Die (2021)

#90

Post by r618 »

LinuxBender wrote: post #68
theshrike79 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest weirdness on IRC compared to all other platforms is that you NEED to be online 24/7 with your client or you'll miss stuff. There is no "backlog" except for the one you see yourself. On the other hand it's a good thing, people can't just join and scroll down 10 years of chat history. But you'll also be completely unfindable unless your client is online.

In addition to the bots others mentioned, there are web front-ends to provide scrollback. Convos [1a], TheLounge [2a], KiwiIRC+KiwiBNC [3] I prefer to instead run irssi+otr in a GNU screen session from a random VM/VPS provider. Most others prefer tmux. I'm just stuck in the past I suppose for using GNU screen . [1a] - https://github.com/convos-chat/convos/ [1b] - https://convos.chat/ [2a] - https://github.com/theloun…

screen, or `nohup` (at least in bash) ^)
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