Best IRC client (free) for Windows? reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lovinglamp · 2013-04-04 13:49 I wanted to try Limechat (limechat.net) but the page is in japanese and so is the software download / installer. I'm really looking for something that's more like textual for windows if anyone has any suggestions. The biggest feature I'm looking for is a sound / visual cue when someone types a message with my nick in it. Thanks! EDIT: HexChat it is - thanks guys! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lovinglamp · 2013-04-04 13:49 Also currently evaluating x-chat and Quassel IRC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TingPing · 2013-04-04 14:02 [HexChat](http://hexchat.github.io/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tobsn · 2013-04-04 14:02 mIRC. edit: down votes for mirc? seriously? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lovinglamp · 2013-04-04 14:10 Not free ---------------------------------------------------------------------- idresponse · 2013-04-04 14:47 I've had good luck with HexChat which is what XChat used to be. Although, I have found that if I leave it sitting idle in the background for too long it tends to lock up. Used to be an XChat user and I may have to switch back because of this. Honestly, my favorite of all time was XIRCON. That is long dead though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lovinglamp · 2013-04-04 14:59 Looks like it's based on X-Chat - what makes HexChat better to use? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bodnast · 2013-04-04 14:59 well there are keygens you can use to crack it and make it free, but yeah after 30 days they want you to pay $20...im not sure if anyone has paid $20 for it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- YOYAYA · 2013-04-04 15:38 might as well be free. Its also much better than the competition. edit: It has a built in "Highlight" system, that will let you know your name was said, or other keywords. And if you want something a little more advanced, you can always script something. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TingPing · 2013-04-04 15:55 Actively developed, actually free on windows, supports more modern standards like SASL, and plenty of little bugfixes and enhancements. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- liquoranwhores · 2013-04-04 16:32 You can click continue forever. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poo706 · 2013-04-04 16:32 I've always been a fan of irssi, runs great under Cygwin. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JohnStrangerGalt · 2013-04-04 17:03 I also would recommend hexchat, it is what I am currently using. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bodnast · 2013-04-04 17:15 On newer versions it'll eventually only give you the option to exit, so you gotta keep reopening and closing it until it gives you the option to continue... I prefer my cracked 6.35 to all the newer versions ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2013-04-04 17:29 No it doesn't. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- M2Ys4U · 2013-04-04 17:31 It dials home when you do this, though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- alientity · 2013-04-04 17:33 As good as tho, you can buy it for [$10](http://www.mirc.com/register.php?coupon=MIRC-SWV0-MNKL), and you get a client which is extremely powerful (many moons ago, I actually created an IRC server using the mIRC scripting language). There isn't anything better out there IMO. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poo706 · 2013-04-04 17:35 No it doesn't run, or no it doesn't run great? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2013-04-04 17:39 It never connected no matter how much voodoo the folks on #irssi supplied to me to try. I had no firewall or router in the mix either. Fortunately, I gave up and moved on to Linux :D ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poo706 · 2013-04-04 17:43 Weird, never gave me any trouble whatsoever. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2013-04-04 17:50 I also had some trouble with rxvt and something else I've forgotten the name of ... *shrugs* No worries, though. Linux is far more useful anyway :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aperson · 2013-04-04 17:55 xchat hasn't had any development in two years. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poo706 · 2013-04-04 18:25 Agreed, in regards to the Linux comment. I set up Cygwin so that I could have proper SSH access to Windows and set up irssi for shits and giggles. But 99% of the time I'm using my Arch virtual machine for irssi (and many other things). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tobsn · 2013-04-04 18:49 I did. I was number 27 I think. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Xer0daze · 2013-04-04 19:25 It's like asking "who makes the best donut". It is a matter of opinion. It would depend of specific features you may or may not need. For example, SSL? Domain Authentication? Profile support? etc... most IRC clients including the native mIRC client will perform an audible chime upon receipt of a private message. Should be setup in the options. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- YOYAYA · 2013-04-04 20:43 Its fan boys, mIRC is downvoted in every one of these type threads. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- protospork · 2013-04-04 20:48 There are serious issues with cygwin's builds of perl, and let's be honest: who actually uses irssi without scripting? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- poo706 · 2013-04-04 20:54 My interest in IRC is xdcc, not chatting. DCCstat is the only script I use. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- unholycrap · 2013-04-04 21:02 get out ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Urbano35 · 2013-04-04 21:08 I've left and returned to Quassel multiple times. Its like the foobar of IRC clients: simple and very customizable. I'm sure others like Hex and mirc are amazing as well, but they're just too cluttered for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2013-04-04 21:19 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- farded · 2013-04-04 22:22 Free as in freedom or free as in cost? Edit: I ask because you act like you **have** to pay for mIRC instead of just ignoring the message you get when you run it. How often do you have to restart irc, anyway? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aperson · 2013-04-04 22:59 OP also asked for *free*. MIRC is not free. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PoshBarbaricFlush · 2013-04-04 23:05 No love for Pidgin? I've used it (or its retarded cousin, Adium) for years. You would do well to install a few plugins to smooth out some of the rough edges, but a libpurple based client rocks at IRC. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- faghat · 2013-04-04 23:42 Hexchat is a continuation from xchat-WDK, which is itself a continuation from the original xchat. AFAIK Hexchat's lead dev (who didn't really do much anyway) quit a few months ago so there really isn't a terrible amount of progress. In any case, the main differences from xchat-WDK and Hexchat are small bug/stability fixes. I use xchat-WDK, and I've been using it for years - and I love it. I downloaded Hexchat to give it a try and I honestly have no idea what was actually improved. I don't have any issues with my xchat-WDK in terms of crashing, or any bugs etc. Maybe that's just because I've modified quite a lot of the settings (more than most people would, I assume), but when I tried them both side by side, I couldn't help noticing how lacking Hexchat felt.... the text events were weird and some the GUI had changed for no reason at all. In my opinion I'd at least want you to try them both out (The main site for xchat-WDK was pulled down when Hexchat was released but you can find one of the latest releases of xchat-WDK [here](http://download.cnet.com/XChat-WDK/3000-2150_4-75300337.html)) and decide for yourself which one you prefer. They're both much of a muchness really but I think using Hexchat is unnecessary and I don't really think it's as user friendly as xchat- WDK. That's just my opinion, though. Good luck! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TingPing · 2013-04-05 00:23 He didn't quit and it's moving along at a good pace. As for what changed reading the [changelog](http://docs.hexchat.org/en/latest/changelog.html) helps. Also if you must link to a defunct product it is still hosted on dl.hexchat.org don't ever get it from cnet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2013-04-05 01:46 Why wouldn't you just use the [Windows version](http://www.irssi.org/download)? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- o24 · 2013-04-05 02:49 Almost free =/= free. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- faghat · 2013-04-05 02:56 Oh, well he quit at one point (see [here](https://github.com/hexchat/hexchat/pull/264)). And briefly looking through the changelog, as I said before, it seems there has been minor bug fixes or tweaks - things like "show /WHOIS response on current tab by default" which were an option but you just needed to spend 5 mins configuring the client. And why on earth would lua and Tcl be removed? I can understand the reasons behind the /WHOIS replies etc but there's absolutely no justification to be removing languages... Thanks for dl.hexchat.org though - I never knew about that page. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m1ss1ontomars2k4 · 2013-04-05 02:57 Umm...every IRC client supports nick/keyword highlighting...hell, even Pidgin supports it, and it's not even primarily an IRC client. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m1ss1ontomars2k4 · 2013-04-05 02:59 Pidgin is Adium's retarded cousin, not the other way around. That's why Pidgin's website recommends Adium on Mac OS X. libpurple clients aren't bad for IRC, but there are some bugs in them that remain unresolved, like how PARTing from a channel will cause you spam that channel with PART and PONG messages, for some reason. Or it could just be InspIRCd acting up again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PoshBarbaricFlush · 2013-04-05 05:55 Why do you say Pidgin is the retarded cousin? Adium lacks a lot of pidgin's features, or it did when I last used a Mac 4+ years ago. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m1ss1ontomars2k4 · 2013-04-05 06:01 Adium's very nicely integrated into the OS (which it mostly gets because the OS has built-in address book, etc.). What features are you talking about that Adium doesn't have? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PoshBarbaricFlush · 2013-04-05 06:33 Adium's IRC support was very barebones, even compared to Pidgin. If I recall correctly, you couldn't even automatically identify on connect. As I said, its been years, but I found myself saying "Well I never had that before." when I moved to Linux/Windows. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m1ss1ontomars2k4 · 2013-04-05 06:52 Hmm, I guess I just assumed that it had such support. I'm usually too lazy to configure Adium and Pidgin because irssi (run locally on the IRC server itself) is my usual IRC client, and I'm don't really like to register things like mynick1, mynick2, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- i-ride-dragons · 2013-04-05 08:01 Chatzilla, Metroirc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TingPing · 2013-04-05 09:37 In the last year there have been 1121 commits by 30 contributors changing well over 10,000 lines of code. This is no small bug fix project and its only going to get better. tcl and lua are just no longer supported by us... it's a plugin anybody can get/build it and install it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2013-04-05 16:27 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2013-04-05 16:27 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lovinglamp · 2013-04-05 16:27 You're right which is why in my OP I indicated I was looking for specific feature set comparable to Textual. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- faghat · 2013-04-05 17:31 I'm sure I'll switch to it in the future - I can see a lot of work has gone into it, and there have been some nice changes, but for now I just think there's been a lot of unnecessary changes that I don't really like (or just don't affect me at all). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 500Rads · 2013-04-07 12:12 Best Clients are IRSSI and Mirc but its not free but its worth buying theres also weechat which is similar to irssi but more multiple window friendly i believe Irssi for simplicity MiRC for full on I often run both ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tnecniv · 2013-04-07 17:16 Funny, I feel the same way about XChat ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Urbano35 · 2013-04-07 17:29 Yeah, but xchat isn't free. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tnecniv · 2013-04-07 17:39 HexChat and the Linux version are. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- qubit01 · 2013-04-15 17:36 I've always used HydraIRC. It's long since been abandoned, but has a nice feature set. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xBytez · 2013-04-20 08:49 I love Quasssel, I have QuasselClient with QuasselCore on a server so my IP is hidden and I always stay online like I've never been away :3 (Takes some effort to set up) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shadowh511 · 2013-07-06 07:54 more likely inspircd, you should open an issue ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vidplace7 · 2013-07-14 14:09 Quassel is great! Easily the best bouncer system I've used