💾 Archived View for jagtalon.net › how-irc.gmi captured on 2024-02-05 at 09:28:54. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I used IRC very rarely in the past. Every once in a while, I would hear about a community on IRC so I'd log in, hang out a bit, ask a question, but then I don't end up going back to it. I think the format never stuck with me because I find it to be too chaotic and overwhelming. I could never figure out what the topic was at any given moment. But now I've been using IRC for work so I'm just on it all the time now! It's been a little over a month so I'm getting the hang of it. I know the commands like /me or /away or /query, I know how to auto-join channels, and I know how to increase my privacy a bit by hiding my hostname using the cloak command or connecting through Tor even.
Unfortunately there are two things that I find frustrating with it:
There are some solutions out there that I've tried, but they weren't quite right for me. IRCCloud is excellent and really easy to use, but it's pricey, and I don't like that I have to use their own client to log on to IRC. There's a lot of really nice IRC clients out there that I'd like to use instead! I tried the Matrix-IRC bridge, but it doesn't work well from my experience. I couldn't tell who was online or not whenever I'm using it so I could be @ mentioning a person who's left the room already.
So, I looked into finding a solution this weekend, and I found a program called pounce which is exactly what I'm looking for! It's a "bouncer" that runs on a server so it keeps me online even when my computer goes to sleep (just like IRCCloud!) and it also lets me use *any* IRC client (unlike IRCCloud!). I went through the manual, and I found it relatively easy to set up. It helps that I have an OpenBSD server and pounce was written on OpenBSD, so the instructions were straightforward. I did struggle with the concept of setting up client certificates for both my server (I set up hello.jagtalon.net) and the actual IRC network (OFTC.net), but I got there after some trial and error. Here's my current configuration:
$ cat /home/jag/.config/pounce/oftc.conf # Name of this server local-host = hello.jagtalon.net # We're connecting to OFTC host = irc.oftc.net # Authentication for people connecting to this server # Create a hash and put it in here. See https://git.causal.agency/pounce/about/pounce.1#Other_Options local-pass = REDACTED # Authentication for connecting to OFTC client-cert = /home/jag/client.pem nick = jagtalon
After setting it up, I just have to run `$ pounce oftc.conf`, and I can start connecting different clients to it! On the laptop I have HexChat at the moment, and on the phone I have Revolution IRC. Seems to be working well right now, but we'll see how it goes when I actually use it for work! If you have any IRC tips, lemme know! Also big props to june for making such an excellent tool.