Now you may be thinking; “That chat program is still around?” or “What the heck is a eye-arr-see?”
Well let me tell you my friend. It stands for Internet Relay Chat and it’s been around for 34 years. It’s pretty much perfected at this point and quite easy to use if you have even the slightest technical knowledge.
So IRC servers are separate from one another with each server having it’s own admins. Each server you connect to has it’s own bots ran by individuals to messages and ask for things.
IRC servers work by sending slash commands much like discord does. To message another user you might type /msg coolboot2000 hello world! Piracy on IRC works by sending a bot a pm with the pack number you want.
“Where do I find servers and bots and pack numbers?” It’s as easy as using a xdcc search engine. http://sunxdcc.com/ has both a search and a list of networks. (DCC is Direct Client to Client meaning no files pass thru the server and XDCC is a version of DCC that allows large files to be transferred.)
“How do I connect?” You use an IRC client with SSL support. ~mIRC~ AdiIRC for windows and Hexchat with a patch for Linux. Once installed you can use the slash command /connect or use the clients GUI buttons to make a connection to the server.
“How do I make my own IRC client?” Follow the specifications here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_commands There are a ton of pre-made IRC libraries for pretty much every programming language.
Best luck friends!
edit: updated 11-6-23
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Is there a daily reward for the person who makes the most popular IRC post or something? Everyday I see at least one post relating to how great IRC is and how to use it.
Since RARBG shut down, I been using IRC more often for 2160p releases that are tougher to come by. Also, I never stopped using it for chatting. You won’t ever catch me using that bloated Discord garbage.
I rarely use any kind of chat, but I used IRC sometimes back in the day. I was recently working on a thing where I needed to use Discord for some programming advice. I got the info I needed, but yeah that Discord is a convoluted mess. Newer hardly ever means better.
Could you tell a resourse for 2160p releases? Did not know IRC could be used also for such “big files”.
Seems like the recommended https://sunxdcc.com/ has some 2160p releases, though not anything that usenet or private trackers wouldn’t already have better versions of (from what I can tell).
Based. Haven’t ever used IRC tho. Zoom zoom here
IRC is nice if there aren’t many people. Otherwise you get stuck in queue for downloading the file. That’s my biggest issue with it. I only use it as last resort.
Oh man irc… this brings back memories, hanging around in irc.rizon and downloading the newest animes which was way faster than p2p. Have to check it out again thanks man
It is really authentic but there are many better and new standarts out there thta makes irc unnecessary, but still for tha sake of authenticcity you may use it with friends etc. Me myself running a server for bunch of my friends and since all of them are into tech relevant topics we have written pretty cool irc bots.
btw i dont believe there is someone out here in lemmy who doesnt know irc
It has been many, many moons
Does IRC support sending messages to people offline? Or is that still not supported?
many networks have memoserv for this purpose
though as another user said, using a bouncer is probably the most discord-like experience
I still run a bouncer… nothing has changed here AFAIK
I considered IRC back in 1994, liked it, and never left.
That said, I don’t find it very good for piracy these days, as things have moved on from the days of fserves and xdcc bots being the best thing around.
Interesting topic, thanks. What kind of speeds can one expect when downloading? Can it rival a well-seeded torrent?
it’s a direct connection when transferring a file. no hops, trackers, servers, etc are involved.
once a connection is established then torrents also doesn’t rely on those
Can torrents use SSL yet?
there’s a encryption extension available for torrents
I see libtorrent has SSL support but requires a central source to authenticate it.
Mozilla Thunderbird can connect to IRC servers as a chat client. Just sayin’.
Edit: got downvoted for some reason, so clarified.
IRC really needs a discord styled client.
Something where if you drop an image or video onto it, it’ll automatically upload it to a private imgur link and share it.
If you want to share a larger file, maybe it uploads to wetransfer or something automatically.
Discord is basically IRC and more, but it’s also easier for non-techies to join a discord server, and you have a common identity across all servers.
The beauty of something open like IRC though is the fact that you can make and use any client you want, including an old C64 if you really wanted to… with additional adapters of course
thelounge exists
I could never get into web based clients. Always seemed backwards to me to have a web browser as a dependency.
I definitely understand that.
I personally gave in because it made file uploading easy as well as the fact that thelounge also acts as a bouncer, keeping me online 24/7 even when my browser isn’t up.
Also, it’s not discord. :o
Something where if you drop an image or video onto it, it’ll automatically upload it to a private imgur link and share it.
If there’s not a script out there that does something like this i’d be surprised. If not IRC daemons and clients are mostly open source.
I never found ways to pirate with discord. i’m sure there are but IRC is just so easy.
I was running a matrix -> irc bridge for a while and it would automatically upload and make small files available.
IRC does have file transfer, was how all us cool kids back in the early to mid 90s shared stuff. Its just that sharing is either p2p or you need a bot to mimic p2e.
As for the images, part of the benefit of IRC is its so ridiculously simple that you barely need anything to do it. Yeah features can be added to apps but the payoff isn’t great. If you have the imgr app installed you already have quick image hosting. Tying apps to other services seems counter to how generic and open IRC is.
Yup, use to download all my anime through IRC when I was young 90s and baka torrents or similar. Good times.
mimic p2e.
What does p2e mean in this context? Tried looking it up but not finding anything that sounds right. I’d infer it may mean something similar to client-server, but I’m blanking on what the ‘e’ would stand for then.
Person to Everyone. In the context of this discussion i can post an image, video or file to a discord channel and everyone who goes in there can download it.
In IRC you make a client to client connection and send files directly to one another. You can setup a bot to respond to individual requests and transfer files but there is no “hey everyone download this”
Aaaah, thanks for clarifying! I’ve only dipped in & out of some IRC channels and used it very casually, so wasn’t familiar with the terminology.
The specific protocol for irc is called DCC (Direct Client to Client). It enables a lot of non-chat functionality, one of which is sending/receiving files.
IRCHighway ebooks channel is great
I recently bought mIRC for this purpose after 30 years of borrowing it. Felt like I needed to being a relevant piece of software after all this time.
Is it really still the best IRC client in the world? I stopped IRCing 15 years ago but nobody came close back then.
I like KVIrc. Works on all major OSes. Was part of KDE once. Is really fast and incredibly feature rich.
I prefer HexChat for a Windows IRC client.
I’m on Linux and I also use hexchat
Sounds like there are some good alternatives out there based on the other replies to your question.
I guess I couldn’t go past the nostalgia.
I’m iffy on those, though. They were both availableish in my day. Hexchat looks like a port of Xchat. The other was an old kde chat client. I’ve used both. Didn’t love either. But obviously that’s just me personally
irssi is the best chat client that has ever and will ever be created.
I coudn’t get SSL to work with it otherwise that’s what i’d be using.
Why because the server is using a self signed cert or something? Did you save it from the server and put it in the irssi trusted root store and define it in your config?
Honestly i didn’t know i needed to do those steps.
Yeah, it is confusing especially now that we are all used to HTTPS and automatic configs. If you can grab the self signed cert you can just save it to your irssi folder as a .crt and pop it in the config. I have this bookmarked from a while ago https://joshcurry.co.uk/posts/irssi-connect-to-a-server-which-uses-a-self-signed-certificate/
