IRC

Just the other day i was talking to one of my TA's (Teach assistant) and he mentioned how IRC was still widely used among the developer circle. Although i am not a developer but i still use IRC a lot especially when it comes to getting quick responses from admins. So what is IRC you ask well let me explain

What is IRC? (Totally jacked from wikipedia)
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of realtime Internet chat. It is mainly designed for group (many-to-many) communication in discussion forums called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message.

So having IRC is one thing we also need to connect to an IRC network to be able to talk in channels. There are a few major IRC networks, and they are Freenode, EFNet, GameSurge and more

People would usually connect to this servers using IRC clients and join chat channels. There are few chat clients out there that are free for us to use

mIRC
xChat
irssi <-- my personal favourite
Bersirc

And here are a few basic IRC commands that you should know

/SERVER { Server name } connects you to a particular IRC network
/LIST [ [ { flags } ] { channel mask } ] Lists all current channels.
/QUIT Quits IRC client
/NICK { Nickname } Changes your nickname to whatever you like.
/AWAY [ Away message ] Sets your status as away with some info.
/WHOIS { Nickname } Shows information about someone.

I usually connect to a shell server and start up irssi on a shell server with a screen session running. That way i am always idling on the channels

What is a screen session? More on this on the next post