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Can IRC act as a simple minimalist open source Discord alternative?
user3028938
Member
For years on and off I have been looking for a way to convert people from mega corps social media to small open source communication channels but found getting them to do it very difficult, even for people I would otherwise have thought of as generally open minded.
I have built communities around different topics then when I try and suggest some open source option they get glassy eyed and say something like "all my friends are on (usually) discord or whatsapp/x" or "I don't want to have to install another app".
I tried rocketchat once where I already had a successful discord group and wanted to try and move them over but it failed for the usual kind of stuff above. They reluctantly moved over for a couple of months but saw them slowly decrease interaction and mostly went back to discord and I had to make a choice whether to lose control of the server completely, with someone else making another one, or admit defeat and go back to the discord one so ended doing the latter in that case.
I self hosted that and so learning from that I don't want to commit to all the work of self-hosting for people not to end up using it so having an open source alternative where I could quickly roll equivalents to discord channels to test the waters is what I am looking for.
I have looked at options in the past and say matrix is one option that you don't have to host yourself and can use their servers but came across IRC again in another look at the options. I have no particular problem with matrix but IRC looks even more minimalist, which I like.
Of course this is the daddy that started it all right? Would I equally be able to make a channel on that without having to self host? From what little I know already it like more modern federated servers where they are decentralized and you choose one that suits your niche and make a channel on there without having to self-host right?
I know self-hosting is also an option. What I am thinking is to be able to make new channels quickly on someone else's hosting, as replacement for discord which is most mainstreamer people's go-to now for instant chat, having taken over Skype, and MSN messenger before that. Then if I manage to get some traction and people interacting on there then think about making my own servers for successful ones.
I want to build communities around certain subjects of interest and thinking how to make a whole ecosystem of instant messenger and usual forums like this one all with open source technology. I want to do what most people do with just mindlessly going to facebook and making a group or other usual suspects, privacy none respecting sites, but with all open source tech.
To get normies on board though it has to be as easy and none committal as possible to get them using it. No complex instructions or sign ups or such. I would plan to buy a domain and have a portal to irc with a simple click and make it easy for them to join to minimize the resistance of trying something new and have them drop into the chat with the minimum of hoops.
So could this be suitable to replace nasty Discord? Of course it doesn't have the bells and whistles and UI of that but I like that minimalist design. I know that younger people are used to babyish huge fonts and emojis but I am hoping I will get them to stay with enough people with the content of the groups and the main thing they are active in a given niche so they will forget about the other bloat/trinkets those other closed source offerings offer.
IRC certainly isn't user friendly even for me looking up how to use it, trying to figure out how to get a channel going, but I think doing it the way I suggest above, once I have done my research then it can drop users in very simply?
It certainly has the lowest bar to start chatting doesn't it? unlike discord and other platforms with their constant anti-bot checks and stuff?
Comments
Yes. Can recommend IRC
But, you should provide step-by-step instruction to install the client, configure the connection, registrations process, bouncer, etc.
Not reading that huge wall of text but yeah IRC is better than Discord. It just lacks fancy features like reacts, message editing, etc. If you want something that at least looks a bit modern, try https://thelounge.chat/:
LOL
s/message editing//there's no way you're getting any normal people to move from discord to irc sorry.
edit: and yes what the fuck bro, somebody tldr that shit.
What do you mean can? It is! Isn't it?
It is one of the oldest social network with real connections and communities.
The problem with IRC based solutions is that it is not really federated network like say Mastodon and others.
Unless we explicitly bridge them in an open, standard and universally acceptable manner. You can create the best silo but it would still be a silo.
So, it is like going from corporate silo with your own independent silo even if you host one.
You misspell
technologically challengedi would have given matrix a really soild chance at it but man, they cant get even the most basic shit like search to work in the clients. I have no clue if its just an elements issue or a combination with matrix. Its a shitshow ever since i stated using it a year or 2 ago. But i do appreciate that they fuck around with the layout of the app just to mess with people for fun. Its certainly a lost cause for all of them, i wouldnt even give teamspeak a chance with their new thing as i would have more success to get people to reuse ts3 lol. IRC had its chance and we know where its at.
I'm pretty sure IRCv3 supports reactions now. Message editing would be a bit of a problem but that's a different story.
It does... but if i recall thelounge has had PRs for a lot of ircv3 stuff sitting for ages without much movement. Edit: also requires server side support, which a lot of the bigger networks dont have yet.
Maybe, but nothing supports IRCv3.
In theory, the best thing to use would be something based on XMPP. It supports anything you could possibly need, but there are no polished clients.
True lol, and then you got that annoying bot that goes "forest meant to say: It just lacks fancy features like reacts, , etc.".
Also, amusing timing for IRC to come up. I got tired of trying to keep a fork of thelounge current (I wanted some of the ircv3 things that do work most places, like typing support), and got tired of all the nodejs stuff... spent the weekend working on a single-go-binary alternative that runs pretty lightweight: https://github.com/AlteredParadox/ircthing. It's very much vibe-coded, but has at least been through a few multi-agent code/security review rounds. Been playing with it the last few days
!quote add "True lol, and then you got that annoying bot that goes \"_forest meant to say: It just lacks fancy features like reacts, , etc._\"."Hmm, @forest does stackexchange have IRC channel?
>the llama song
I was once a tree house, I lived in a cake...
yessssssss
I can still hear the glorious sound of the low-bitrate mp3 compression in my mind.
I miss those days. Ultimate Showdown, Bagger 288, random stuff in Japanese...
Nope, they have their own chat rooms built in, e.g. https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/158962/stack-exchange-lobby.
Ah, youth. Playing fps, mmorpg, 2hu, etc. Browsing you-know-what
I still play 2hu! Even have the TLMC for listening. Worth every terabyte.