Re:Simplicity of IRC
by c0l0 on Sunday January 09, 2022 @02:14PM
(#29866382)
We had an internal instance of ZNC for human users to connect their clients to (at their option - but that was the documented and preferred way of getting onto the IRC network). Creating ZNC user profiles was part of the semi-automated onboarding/setup procedure, whilst ZNC authentication was done against the dovecot IMAP/SASL server we had for email. More casual IRC users in the company (marketing etc.) usually preferred to use an intranet-hosted web application (The Lounge) to access it from their browser, while most IT people had native clients of their choice set up (hexchat, irssi, etc.). Worked well.
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Thanks, I was inspired by your post and looked at irc servers. The main problem, vis-a-vis slack, was the channel history. There are modules but they have timestamp and limit problems. And irssi in gnu screen would only work while screen is running and would only work for those happy with the setup. ZNC, although sadly adding more complexity, seems to be the way to go.
> There are modules but they have timestamp
You need a client and bouncer (or server, if you connect directly) that supports this extension: https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/server-time
> and limit problems.
ditto, but https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory if I understand you correctly.
ZNC has its own issues. We had a repeatable crash that happened every time a particular user connected (it took us a while to figure that out).
Sure, most software projects and products have their share of flaws and bugs :)
I do not claim ZNC or our whole IRC setup was perfect, but for me and many others, it did a very decent job of providing effective, no-frills, getting-things-done means of communicating, all while consuming little resources on both server and clients, and being simple, underestandable, and easy to hook other software into.
I really miss it, and personally dislike (especially the client UX of) most trendy/recent alternatives.