IRC [LWN.net]

IRC

Posted Feb 22, 2026 19:04 UTC (Sun) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051)
In reply to: IRC by marcH
Parent article: Open-source Discord alternatives

ZNC is really nice for that "offline" experience (https://wiki.znc.in/ZNC). It speaks the IRC protocol to connecting clients, so any IRC-capable client will work fine. It has a plugin ecosystem, which includes a web interface (that you must not put onto the public Internet...). While initial configuration and learning may seem a steep climb, my experience has been that it is mostly 'set it and forget it'.

I use Weechat on my desktop/laptop and "IRC for Android" on my phone with ZNC as the bouncer (aka "offline IRC proxy"). Sadly, "IRC for Android" seems to be abandoned as a project, and backups don't work, but I don't care about backups... since I use ZNC as my "single source of truth" for all my IRC accounts (Libera.Chat, OFTC).

ZNC is certainly oriented towards a DIY approach to computing services. Is DIY for 'beginners'? Not really. But, then again, DIY is not really for beginners, but everyone is a beginner at some point. :)

IRC

Posted Feb 22, 2026 20:10 UTC (Sun) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (2 responses)

That's definitely a long way from "sign up, start using it, it just works".

IRC

Posted Feb 22, 2026 20:30 UTC (Sun) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link] (1 responses)

Sure. It depends(tm) on what you want from your computing environment, including considerations around the level of surveillance, advertising and commodification of your time and attention you are willing to put up with for less apparent effort.

"No such thing as a 'free lunch'." was such a illustrative phrase. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch)

IRC

Posted Feb 23, 2026 3:15 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> "No such thing as a 'free lunch'."

While proprietary solutions are generally more user-friendly, I hope it's only because they have more resources and are ahead of the curve, not because user-friendliness and privacy are technically incompatible with each other. We are only talking about messaging here; I don't know whether it's a "basic human right" but it certainly should not be rocket science. Maybe asking for privacy + user-friendliness while not paying anything is still a bit too much (someone has to pay for those cloud bills...), but it should be technically possible to have at least the first two at the same time? Looking forward to it.

PS: I have no idea whether something more "modern" could be built while preserving the IRC protocol. I'm only noticing that none of the very many alternatives seems to try that.