hexchat VS Quassel IRC

Start off using HexChat for a client. You can find channels here: https://netsplit.de/channels/

This is a bug specific to Python 2 that was already reported on Hexchat's bugtracker and there is a fix that will be part of the next release.

First off, grab yourself an IRC client. On their connection info page Hackint has information for both WeeChat and Hexchat, but you could use any IRC client.

Gajim is for XMPP. For IRC you need Hexchat or Weechat or something like that.

Hexchat is one of the more popular ones.

IRChighway.net with hexchat.github.io

IRC - Also still around and in some cases, the same as it ever was, albeit with a smaller user base. A list of networks can be found here, and while there are many actively developed IRC clients out there, if you don't know where to start, most people recommend HexChat. Reddit's affiliated network is called Snoonet. mIRC is still actively developed by Khaled Mardam-Bey, so by all means, feel free to give that a shot if you are so inclined.

> But all of the modern services like Teams, Slack and Discord, have seamlessness between client devices as their first priority.

Can't speak for the others, but Teams is really hit-or-miss. Missed notifications, missed messages, out of order messages. Then it appears to be fixed for three months only to happen again. It mostly seems to happen on Android.

In general, you're right, multi-device appeared to have been solved for IM - at least MSN messenger and Skype had it - right around the time when the smart phone came around, but then we had the same problem again in the mobile world, because somehow those messengers couldn't successfully move to phones: WhatsApp and the likes was bound to one device again. They added web access later, but that was more of a hack than true multi-device support.

The big problem the phone messaging apps solved was that their protocols didn't require a persistent connection. Theoretically, all the other protocols, MSN, ICQ, Skype, IRC could have been extended to support this too, but it's always faster to just build something new and be first to market.

If you want to use IRC today and have that modern multi-device experience, IMO the most decent solution is Quassel[1] (and Quasseldroid for Android). It's like a bouncer, but uses a custom protocol between the bouncer (quassel-core) and the GUI (quassel-client), so that it can perfectly sync state across all devices, and with flaky connections on mobile. It obviously required you to run the core on some server so it's accessible from everywhere, so nothing for "normies" as TFA calls them, but to me it's what makes IRC usable in the modern world. I wouldn't want to use irssi in a screen via ssh in termux on my phone.

The next best thing, if you're a Web 2.0 aficionado is probably The Lounge[2].

[1] https://quassel-irc.org/

[2] https://thelounge.chat/

Quassel IRC: A modern, cross-platform, distributed IRC client. Tech Stack: C++, Qt.

You can use a bouncer to do this. ZNC is the most popular. Quasse is a different take on the bouncer, where you have a special client that logs into your Quassel server, and the server logs into IRC. Has certain advantages, like more seamless scrollback and so forth. A variant take on this is irccloud, which is probably the "best" if you just want something turnkey that works with minimal fuss. It has good push notifications, a good web client, and excellent mobile clients

I use purple-discord (libpurple/Pidgin plugin) + BItlBee (IRC chat gateway, libpurple variant) + Quassel (distribued IRC client, like a bouncer) on a home server, and use Quasseldroid to connect on mobile. I would eventually like to simplify this setup.

Personally, I use a self-hosted "Core" (server) of Quassel I compiled from source and host remotely. Attach to the Core "locally" on a ZeroTier LAN network through a persistent physically independent WireGuard/reverse proxy/edge node microserver using various open source apps (preferably compiled from source). On Android I use QuasselDroid and of course compiled from source .

I've been a massive user of IRC since the mid 90s... have written lots of bots, scripts etc plus set up plenty of stuff to deal with being able to disconnect your client without missing out on anything (currently use https://quassel-irc.org/ with the daemon on a VPS). I was even l33t enough to "read bitchx.doc" back in the day...

Quassel - Quassel IRC is a modern, cross-platform, distributed IRC client.

Seems really similar to Quassel (https://github.com/quassel/quassel/), though I don't believe that has a webclient...