IRC Help

The Basics
   If you are brand-new to Internet Relay Chat and floundering in this unique communication medium that presupposes a minimum level of computer fluency, I would suggest this primer as a good place to begin. The rest of the comments on this page are for those of you who are already in this "comfort zone" or well beyond it.
   Having tried almost every IRC client out there made for WINNT, unix, and linux in their original form, heavily scripted, and ports to other operating systems, I'll simply provide you with a listing and sourcing of my favored clients and some caveats for each of them. This listing is far from being comprehensive and doesn't include the myriad scripted versions of each client since I prefer to do my own (more secure) customization.
Windows/NT Clients

mIRC is a stable GUI interface functional for color and sound which is easy on system resources; it is also rather bland and boring. Many add on scripts are available for customization or you can make your own with mIRC scripting. Beginners usually require some help configuring the local information settings in their setup to be able to successfuly initiate DCC. (On a dialup "get ip from server" is best; behind a router, enter your public ip and hostname.) This is probably the most popular client out there and a very intuitive one. Version 5.7 allows you to enable agent events by downloading Microsoft agent and the speech is considerably less robotic than the old Monologue or textHELP! engines.

pIRCH 98 is a more advanced, fully-featured client with a somewhat more attractive GUI interface, scripted in pascal, and enabling tdcc for faster file transfers. It too supports color and sound and in addition has somewhat quirky voice and video tdcc capability. pIRCH does not allow customization of its settings and initiating DCC behind a DSL router may not be possible. It is my favorite client for dial-up connections from a laptop. An annoying foible is the small size of script files that may be edited by its built-in scripting engine (use an external editor).

Visual IRC is scripted in visual basic and is the most advanced client I have tried. It has the nicest of the GUI interfaces and besides being fully featured with turbo DCC for rapid file transfer, color and sound capability, it allows somewhat quirky tdcc of both voice and video. However it has a memory leak and is resource-hungry. It is my favored client for a WINNT machine with adequate RAM for a few hours of IRC chat. it can be heavily scripted with a built-in script engine. Development of the client was stalled for a long time but pre-release make of Version 2.0 is now available. My first impression of it was positive but it is still unfinished and still a resource hog. I'd recommend you staying with Version 1.10 unless you are comfortable with bleeding edge Betas.

Unix/Linux Shell Clients

ircII was the first widely used IRC chat client. It runs on shell access by telnet or terminal emulation programs. The GUI is basic though ASCII color may be enabled. It is stable, simple, powerful and fast. Although I may use it from a shell to bind to a particular vhost if I have trouble doing so with the clients below, I usually prefer clients facilitating multi-channel toggling. However, this is still the first client I would recommend for a neophyte on a leased shell to try.

Bitch-X is the most popular ircII-based client. It has a lovely ASCII color graphic interface and is so fully featured it is considered bloated by some. If you are not "too lame to read BitchX.doc," I recommend it highly as it is my favored client when I am accessing a shell by telnet.

kSirc is a kde client for the X Window System (X11) offering a nice GUI environment and powerful scripting. (You can try ksirc.org but they seem to have gone offline.) Frankly I find it pretty bland and seldom use it as I prefer other unix clients.

X-Chat is a graphical IRC client requiring a UNIX computer running an X Window System and the GTK GUI library. The graphical interface is elegant and add-on scripts allow sound capability. The slickest feature, and the one of which I am fondest and use most frequently, is its ability to open up a shell tab. It is my favored client when I am IRC'ing from one of my own shells, either locally or on an exported X Window Desktop. A quirk is that you must enter your private ip in the setup to be able to initiate DCC's behind a router although you can receive them in any case. It allows you to integrate custom-made perl scripts with your client and to bind aliased ips just as you can with ircII and Bitch-X. Use versions 1.6.2 or more recent as earlier ones have an ascii input validation error that allows remote commands to be executed on your machine.

Mac O/S Clients

Ircle is the most fully-featured client available. It handles scripting, sound, faces, pop-ups, and DCC exceptionally well.

MacIRC has a nice GUI interface, supports multiple channels, sounds and is readily scriptable.

Chat Interface for JAVA-enabled Browsers
   Are you either too lazy or too busy to bother with a conventional chat client? You may chat in EFnet #mensa by allowing this java applet to run on your computer.
Linux Help
   If you are a linux neophyte just learning your way around Linus Torvalds' unix rewrite, you may find this compendium of linux howto's helpful.

[Last updated on 2/11/02]

Copyright Quarf 2000, all rights reserved.

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	mIRC is a stable GUI interface functional for color and sound which is easy on system resources; it is also rather bland and boring. Many add on scripts are available for customization or you can make your own with mIRC scripting. Beginners usually require some help configuring the local information settings in their setup to be able to successfuly initiate DCC. (On a dialup "get ip from server" is best; behind a router, enter your public ip and hostname.) This is probably the most popular client out there and a very intuitive one. Version 5.7 allows you to enable agent events by downloading Microsoft agent and the speech is considerably less robotic than the old Monologue or textHELP! engines.
	pIRCH 98 is a more advanced, fully-featured client with a somewhat more attractive GUI interface, scripted in pascal, and enabling tdcc for faster file transfers. It too supports color and sound and in addition has somewhat quirky voice and video tdcc capability. pIRCH does not allow customization of its settings and initiating DCC behind a DSL router may not be possible. It is my favorite client for dial-up connections from a laptop. An annoying foible is the small size of script files that may be edited by its built-in scripting engine (use an external editor).
	Visual IRC is scripted in visual basic and is the most advanced client I have tried. It has the nicest of the GUI interfaces and besides being fully featured with turbo DCC for rapid file transfer, color and sound capability, it allows somewhat quirky tdcc of both voice and video. However it has a memory leak and is resource-hungry. It is my favored client for a WINNT machine with adequate RAM for a few hours of IRC chat. it can be heavily scripted with a built-in script engine. Development of the client was stalled for a long time but pre-release make of Version 2.0 is now available. My first impression of it was positive but it is still unfinished and still a resource hog. I'd recommend you staying with Version 1.10 unless you are comfortable with bleeding edge Betas.

	ircII was the first widely used IRC chat client. It runs on shell access by telnet or terminal emulation programs. The GUI is basic though ASCII color may be enabled. It is stable, simple, powerful and fast. Although I may use it from a shell to bind to a particular vhost if I have trouble doing so with the clients below, I usually prefer clients facilitating multi-channel toggling. However, this is still the first client I would recommend for a neophyte on a leased shell to try.
	Bitch-X is the most popular ircII-based client. It has a lovely ASCII color graphic interface and is so fully featured it is considered bloated by some. If you are not "too lame to read BitchX.doc," I recommend it highly as it is my favored client when I am accessing a shell by telnet.
	kSirc is a kde client for the X Window System (X11) offering a nice GUI environment and powerful scripting. (You can try ksirc.org but they seem to have gone offline.) Frankly I find it pretty bland and seldom use it as I prefer other unix clients.
	X-Chat is a graphical IRC client requiring a UNIX computer running an X Window System and the GTK GUI library. The graphical interface is elegant and add-on scripts allow sound capability. The slickest feature, and the one of which I am fondest and use most frequently, is its ability to open up a shell tab. It is my favored client when I am IRC'ing from one of my own shells, either locally or on an exported X Window Desktop. A quirk is that you must enter your private ip in the setup to be able to initiate DCC's behind a router although you can receive them in any case. It allows you to integrate custom-made perl scripts with your client and to bind aliased ips just as you can with ircII and Bitch-X. Use versions 1.6.2 or more recent as earlier ones have an ascii input validation error that allows remote commands to be executed on your machine.

	Ircle is the most fully-featured client available. It handles scripting, sound, faces, pop-ups, and DCC exceptionally well.
	MacIRC has a nice GUI interface, supports multiple channels, sounds and is readily scriptable.