IRC program

Given the "font of all knowledge" status of this group, it seemed the best place to ask this question.....
What is the best (meaning best and free) IRC program?

I can't believe I have lasted this long without irc but hey ....

You don't mention if you want it for Win32, OS X, or Linux.

Personally, I'm partial to X-Chat (at least for Win32). It is simple, and no goofy buttons unless you want to see them.

For linux, I like CToolz or Scrollz, but that was umpteen years ago. No clue what the best out there is for that platform.

- Tim

I have both linux and windows workstations, so as long as its not mac I'll be fine

IME, XChat's the best GUI IRC client on all platforms. I use irssi, though, as a text-mode client.

It's certainly not the best, but if you want an all-in-one solution, Trillian does IRC along with AIM, yahoo, MSN, and ICQ. I use it simply because I don't feel like running a ton of chat clients.

Be warned though, the Trillian 3 chat client lacks some features you might want. A big one for me was lack of a /ignore command. The Trillian 3 IRC client was restarted from scratch, and the developers did not see it as a high priority to restore every feature the old IRC plugin had.

Of course if you're just using it to connect to #empeg, you probably won't need ignore.

Heh, I thought /ignore was a mandatory feature in #empeg :-)

I personally didn't need it though to ignore an annoyning user. Instead at work, I wanted it to ignore a certain bot that announces cases to the room. I have no need to monitor them, so it's just extra text filling the screen.

Anyhow, I do also recommend XChat or Trillian on a Windows box. There are still free versions of XChat for Windows out there, just search around on Google to find them.

Thanks guys, I'll give them both a try

I'm amazed nobody has mentioned mirc - by far the best client (for Windows).

Rob

I have always used Mirc. Love it