Get connected with IRC!

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. IRC is the most preferred mode of communication in the Free and Open source world. We may have to wait for a few hours for a reply if we choose e-mail or some forum as our communication channel. On the other hand, we can use IRC which is very fast.

Getting Started

Most IRC servers do not require users to log in, but a user will have to set a nickname before being connected. It is advised to have a nickname. Let’s see how to create an account and connect to IRC channels. We’ll need an IRC client in order to login to the network. We are using Pidgin, because it comes pre-installed on many GNU/Linux distributions.

We can manage multiple accounts from this single chat client. Some of the protocols supported by Pidgin are:

• AIM
• Gtalk
• IRC
• MSN
• MySpace
• Yahoo etc

Click on the Add button

-> Select IRC from the protocol menu

Provide the Nickname in the Screen name field.

Change the server to irc.freenode.net

Leave the password field blank.

I have chosen the screen name: ‘username’

As soon as we login, a message from freenode-connect is received. It looks like this:

(02:23:14 IST) freenode-connect: Received CTCP ‘VERSION’ (to username) from freenode-connect

If the Nickname (screen name) is already chosen by someone else, we can change the nick name with the help of this command in the window that just opened:

/nick new_nick_name

If username already exists, we can try for other nicknames like username2 by typing the command

/nick screen_name

If we want to start using IRC without registering our nickname, we can do so by entering this command.

/join #channel-name

If we want to join the #bmslug channel, we need to type the command

/join #bmslug

We get a window which is similar to a chatroom :

To address someone, type the first few characters of their name and hit the tab key, the auto complete function will complete their name and append a “:” to it. Now we can type the message and hit the enter key.

To Register the nickname

/msg nickserv register <password> <email>

This command registers us with the current Nickname of ours.

We can identify ourselves with the command:

/msg nickserv identify <password>

This completes the basic usage of IRC.