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I used to love IRC and have a fair amount of nostalgia for it. That said, a post advocating for IRC that doesn't even mention Matrix is failing to discuss the best replacement for IRC. Matrix is the IRC killer. After using Matrix, I don't understand how anyone could want to go back to IRC with its net splits, non persistent chat history, lack of rich text, etc.
Okay, but does Matrix allow you to /slap people?
I know this is a joke, but it does allow for /me commands, so this is certainly possible in a client. The macro does not appear to be available in Element, however.
Oww!
/dance
I've used matrix myself, it's awesome. There is a good chance that it really takes off, the more people gets fed up with surveillance capitalism, which I guess is the best phrase to describe things right now.
would love to know some good matrix servers? do you have suggestions?
I'm on the matrix.org server, it works well. Install something like Element as a client if you like and join some rooms.
Some sample rooms:
The server you sign up with doesn't matter all that much. Just pick one of the reputable ones and follow the rules. You can generally join rooms on any server.
Irc clients don't need to be in a web browser, and personally I don't want persistent chat saved forever. I also just want text much of the time.
That said, I do find some of the features in discord (and hence in matrix) nice. I just currently have only a support for lemmy in Matrix and haven't seen groups use those servers yet. Discord hasn't yet caused a migration.
There are a lot of Matrix clients to choose from; they're not all electron web apps and there's even a terminal app available. There could easily be a Matrix client that behaves the way you want, but I couldn't tell you if one exists. You'd have to try a few and see if they have settings that work well for you.
I guess I'm a little curious about why you wouldn't want persistent chat history. Major IRC networks log all chats anyway, so it's only you who's missing out on having that chat history available if you are ever offline.
I see the Matrix rooms being bridged with their IRC counterparts. So IRC servers can live a few more years, I think.
They certainly can and will live for a while, but the IRC side is missing out on useful features and I honestly find rooms that are bridged to IRC a little annoying in Matrix because IRC folks generate a lot of join/leave events.
For me IRC scores points on not having push notifications, rich text, custom emojis, embedded images/video, etc. It's plain text communication — multiplayer notepad, if you will — and it's great at what it does. I love that I don't need anything but a terminal window for utilizing the full capabilities of IRC, and the lack of persistent chat history is a great counter to FOMO. (Yeah, you can stay online or have a bot that logs everything — the point is that most people don't.)
Thats a nice point actually. Sometimes less is more.
Still use IRC but it gets really clunky / complicated when you want to have push notifications / persistent history etc.. You end up setting up something like ZNC (IRC Bouncer) to act as an always online server and then hooking clients to it persist your online status.
It works out of the box and completely painlessly with The Lounge.
It web based so some might not be a fan, but for mobile use it's pretty great. Just install as PWA on Android or iOS and it's pretty seamless.
I have heard a few people mention using it.
It looks nice. But I assume it's sending messages in clear text? Im using Element a bit (https://element.io/) but it doesn't feel as fun as Lemmy. I guess it can be great for general chatting in real time though.
It's an IRC client, so yes everything is plain text. IRC is a very basic protocol, no encryption or anything other than TLS for your connection to the server.
Just love the 1995 website feeling :-)
Yeah me too, I've been missing this. Personal websites that aren't corporate are so cool.
I'm working on a decentralized free hosting protocol (hosts your stuff, help others host theires. It's all automatic, you just share some stuff and people share yours. All encrypted and so on), it's working, would you be interested in checking it out?
So, like Geocities but, decentralized?
Not to undermine your project, but what's the difference with it, and just quickly spinning up a LAMP?
Geocities, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time! Wasn't that a 3D world or could you share files too?
LAMP is centralised, that's the real difference.
With Tenfingers, you can shut your pc down and your site (or what ever data you share) will still be up.
It's also hard to shut down, files are encrypted (so you must have access to the link file to even know what people share) and possibly shared in lots of different countries.
I just asked about getting in to it in the current year if you have any tips: https://lemmy.world/post/2348478?scrollToComments=true
Bonus points for optimising IRC nostalgia post for rendering in Lynx.