Libera IRC Channels Sorted by Number of Users

https://netsplit.de/channels/?net=Libera.Chat

by susam • 2 years ago

97 74 2 years ago

I've been using IRC again recently after a long break. I've been struggling to pick a client. I'm on Debian+KDE so I've been using Konversation, but it crashes after a couple hours (so I dont see conversations until I restart it).

I've been pleased to see that IRC still has community. There's something that makes IRC feel safe that I didn't get when I tried Discord.

Retr0id• 2 years ago

I use https://thelounge.chat/, it requires self-hosting somewhere, but it gives you a discord-like experience.

sva_• 2 years ago

That's pretty neat. But it doesn't seem to work as a bouncer keeping the messages when you're offline?

edit: nvm, it does

drdo• 2 years ago

I've used thelounge for a while but I'm baffled by how slow searching is.

myself2484• 2 years ago

TheLounge is fantastic. I've got it on a pi in the basement on a battery, and I just VPN into home from anywhere. Been running 3-ish years I think.

It works surprisingly well from mobile browsers, too.

chadsix• 2 years ago

And you can self host it on your own computer with 1-click [1]

[1] https://github.com/ipv6rslimited/cloudseeder

evbogue• 2 years ago

I suggest irssi with tmux for the authentic experience.

aaronmdjones• 2 years ago

I'm more of a WeeChat in tmux guy myself.

a-french-anon• 2 years ago

https://git.causal.agency/catgirl/ for some suckless credits.

perlgeek• 2 years ago

The authentic experience is irssi in screen, tmux is quite new in comparison (2015 maybe?)

mediumsmart• 2 years ago

I vote for weechat in vterm in emacs for plausible deniability

nj5rq• 2 years ago

I currently use ERC, the GNU Emacs IRC client. Obviously, if you are not using Emacs already, you should not use it, so I recommend irssi. Pretty easy to configure, and with lots of options.

coldpie• 2 years ago

Irssi was good, but Weechat has completely surpassed it.

Numerlor• 2 years ago

I like the UI quassel offers; they also have a server for better integration over znc but I've never tried that

jetbalsa• 2 years ago

I've been using IRCCloud for my IRC since it has very good mobile support and acts like a bouncer as well

mrweasel• 2 years ago

That's what I've been using for work for a while now. It's is really good, though I feel like IRC loses a bit of it's charm, running the client in a browser.

Privately I'm using chat.sr.ht, which is also really good, but with less features than IRCCloud, but I can also easily connect to backend bouncer using irssi.

If you're only in one or two channels, Irssi is okay, but when you have a need to be in multiple channels it get a little rough finding good clients.

sho_hn• 2 years ago

Hi! I used to work on Konversation back in the day.

When a KDE app crashes it pops up an error reporting notification or dialog. Did you file a bug via this or do you have the debug info from this dialog saved? Happy to take a look whether I can fix this for you.

anfogoat• 2 years ago

Funnily enough, the linked page shows The Lounge IRC channel among the ten most populous on Libera. (The Lounge is similar to IRCCloud but self-hosted.)

https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge

Svip• 2 years ago

I use irssi in a screen with a Discord plugin to Bitlbee, so I can connect to Discord using IRC. I'm sure WeeChat or tmux are fine, but I am not reconfiguring my setup again. It's been working for over a decade now.

benoliver9992• 2 years ago

If you are into TUI stuff I can recommend Senpai https://git.sr.ht/~delthas/senpai/ - it's pretty much how I like to configure weechat and irrsi etc but out of the box.

There's also a new-ish IRC bouncer out there that's a lot simpler than ZNC, soju https://codeberg.org/emersion/soju

guilherme-puida• 2 years ago

I use senpai+soju+gamja and they all work very well together.

LargoLasskhyfv• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVIrc

https://github.com/kvirc/KVIrc

https://www.kvirc.net/

...or anything else, really.

But since you're on KDE, and this integrates well, it seems preferrable.

I remember a similar experience like yours eons ago. Koversation sucked. KVirc didn't. Can't compare to now, because I won't touch contemporary KDE with a ten foot pole, but KVirc still doesn't suck, whereever I'm running it. OTOH Hexchat doesn't, either.

Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_IRC_clients test 'em, pick one.

kqr2• 2 years ago

I see a lot of recommendations for Irssi and I have to throw in a suggestion to replace Irssi: WeeChat. It can be configured to look and feel very similar to Irssi, but

- it uses more sensible defaults,

- it is actively maintained,

- judging by the list in TFA it has twice the number of users, and

- it is built on better practises making extension etc. easier.

(That said, if you're not interested in a text-based interface, The Lounge does look really good. But I've never tried myself.)

pavel_lishin• 2 years ago

The last time I used irc, WeeChat was also my client of choice, having also migrated over from irssi.

pferde2• 2 years ago

For the record, irssi is still actively maintained and developed, but it is understaffed, and has a lot of technical debt standing in the way of some new features.

RGamma• 2 years ago

Weechat via screen/tmux or bouncer is quite pleasant.

RF_Savage• 2 years ago

For a desktop client hexchat/xchat works fine, imo.

TonyTrapp2• 2 years ago

Important to note that HexChat was discontinued a few months ago though, and it seems like there's no official follow-up project yet (even though several people have forked it to add their own experiments and fixes).

Barrin92• 2 years ago

I've been using https://github.com/squidowl/halloy for a while. simple and very snappy.

tbeseda• 2 years ago

+1 for halloy. Very snappy but it does seem to bog when there is a huge buffer to scroll.

LorenDB• 2 years ago

Sadly the old Libera <-> Matrix bridge has been permanently retired. Thankfully, some projects (KDE, for example) run their own bridges for their rooms.

pferde2• 2 years ago

And that's how it should be. Centralized, "global" bridges are unwieldy and prone to problems.

pfdietz• 2 years ago

(finds the first channel I read on page 7)

kqr2• 2 years ago

A decade ago I used to be quite active in several of these popular channels, but I remember them having on the order of 2000 joined nicknames. Has this changed, or am I misremembering?

Zambyte• 2 years ago

You can see user counts on the page linked. The highest one, #linux, has just over 2100.

0898• 2 years ago

I was active on a channel called #digi in the late 90s. A few years ago, I downloaded an IRC client on the remote chance it was still around.

Not only was it still active – many of the same people were still in the room.

jl6• 2 years ago

MOHH OMLOMOHLMOHLOMUHUHUHO

sossupummi• 2 years ago

I don't think it's working. It's showing 20 users for all channels.

TonyTrapp2• 2 years ago

It was looking fine when the link was posted a few hours ago. Maybe a temporary hickup.

gwd2• 2 years ago

Nit: Hiccup (or hiccough)

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hiccup

jfindley• 2 years ago

It's definitely not working. Several of the channels I'm currently in (which are not private channels for the record) aren't listed at all, and it's not sorted by user counts at all. There are channels with hundreds of users listed, but according to the "sorting" the largest channel has 20 users.

sen• 2 years ago

I’ve been back on IRC over the last year or 2 and been enjoying it. It’s obviously not as wildly active as it used to be, but you still find very smart people to answer questions and/or chat about random stuff, and most of the big open source projects have large channels which can be interesting to hang out in.

HumblyTossed2• 2 years ago

I haven't used IRC regularly since forever ago, but I've tried to get back into lately. Problem is, some of the channels I join, there's zero chat going on. I see a lot of users, so maybe they're all just messaging directly to each other?

-- prefer not to say what channels, but they're related to certain programming languages.

packetlost2• 2 years ago

probably active in other channels. Most people use bouncers so they're permanently hanging out in those channels whether there's conversation or not.

pabs3• 2 years ago

Most channels are silent until someone has a question, maybe stimulate the discussion by asking your questions on IRC instead of search engines or AI?

Doxin• 2 years ago

A lot of IRC channels have sporadic activity at best. Most regulars just have their IRC client open and in a lot of channels all day. When conversation happens they'll join in.

packetlost2• 2 years ago

I'll second this. It functions very well as a filter function for the "hacker" types, which is exactly who I want to be around.

gwd2• 2 years ago

Weird that #Xen is listed #2, since:

1. After Freenode imploded, Xen officially moved to oftc.net

2. A couple of years ago, we then officially moved to Matrix

But then it looks like there are only 20 users in all the channels on the front page (including #Xen)? That seems rather low for the network which was meant to have taken over freenode.

xnorswap• 2 years ago

It's impossible to believe there are 7 pages of channels with exactly 20 users.

ampere• 2 years ago

This information doesn't appear to be accurate, I'm in libera.chat channels with hundreds of users that don't appear in this list.

dijit2• 2 years ago

netsplit.de respects +i/+p/+s ; so if your channel isn't showing up in /list then they're not being scraped.

dewey• 2 years ago

I've recently retired my self-hosted bouncer (znc) and switched to IRCCloud (https://www.irccloud.com).

Can recommend it to everyone, having a decent mobile app, history sync, push notifications and just having it open in a browser tab makes a big difference and I'm using IRC much more again, even if it's just following some discussions on #postgresql or various hackerspace channels.

dijit2• 2 years ago

My IRC network seems to have been delisted :(

I wonder why (my net is "DarkScience", and would be 14th in the top 100): https://netsplit.de/networks/?query=maverick

:'(

OutOfHere• 2 years ago

Not working. It's not listing various channels that I am in.

rglullis• 2 years ago

Aside from inertia, is there any reason to prefer using IRC over XMPP?

mg• 2 years ago

#linux has 2198 users right now. That might be the largest.

What is everybody's favorite channel?

I find #python pretty good (1501 users!). Also #debian, #php, #javascript, #math and #statistics.

#startups was great in the past but is kinda empty at the moment.

tslocum• 2 years ago

If you are a fan of free software and you are at least slghtly backgammon-curious, join us at #bgammon, home of https://bgammon.org

etc-hosts• 2 years ago

container of znc https://hub.docker.com/_/znc

and irssi is the way to go

llmblockchain• 2 years ago

The channel I frequent the most has 6 users in it. It's not about the quantity, it's about the quality.

;)

VagabundoP• 2 years ago

Such fond memories of IRC. When I was in college sometime in '93 I had to compile some source on a VMS system the college gave me access to and bingo, I was connected to a US server efnet. Such good times, interacting with many weird and wonderful people back then.

bitxbitxbitcoin• 2 years ago

Anyone have any #weed chan stories from back in the day they’d like to share perchance?

Libera IRC Channels Sorted by Number of Users

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