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Comment by nvy | Hacker News Reader

Imagine the utility of discord or slack, except not locked into someone's for-profit walled garden/data farm.

For those of us who still like IRC despite how the UX remains somewhat dated, this is the dream.

Without an offline history and sane support for multiple clients, it does not really have the same utility. I’m using IRC, but oh my gosh is it a pain to set up and maintain. Bouncers are terrible, so the alternative is IRC clients that basically run their own little server that I connect to.

>Without an offline history and sane support for multiple clients, it does not really have the same utility. I’m using IRC, but oh my gosh is it a pain to set up and maintain. Bouncers are terrible, so the alternative is IRC clients that basically run their own little server that I connect to.

I agree, but the IRCv3 spec rectifies most of this by implementing chat history and some other niceties, while modern ircds such as Ergo implement server-side bouncer functionality so that you can have multiple clients connected.

It's not there yet, which is why I used the term "dream".

That indeed sounds promising.

For me, the UX is the killer feature (i use irssi)

Slack and discord are very attention grabbing. I want to be logged into my chat client while still being able to get work done. The dated ux serves to not steal my attention.

I used irssi for years, but I want something that will work on my phone without the connection dropping all the time if I let the display go to sleep or if I change networks.

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