Long Live IRC

by Carlie Fairchild

Find Linux Journal on irc.freenode.net, #linuxjournal. Join us in the room any time for some quick help, support or witty banter.

New to IRC? From Wikipedia, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is, "a protocol for live interactive Internet text messaging (chat) or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file sharing.Client software is available for every major operating system that supports Internet access."

Once in a chat room, these user IRC commands will help you get around:

  • /? - List Commands
  • /ABOUT - Displays information about the chat room
  • /CHANNEL or /CH [channel] - Change channels
  • /CHANNEL by itself to list channels and subjects
  • /CLEAR - Clears the screen by sending a bunch of blank lines
  • /DO [action] - Displays an action like "Yourname [action]"
  • /HELP - Displays this help screen
  • /INFO or /I - Displays info about logins, users on,current time
  • /LIST or /L - Lists people on this channel
  • /LISTALL or /LA - List people on all channels
  • /MSG - Displays a list of messages
  • /PAGE or /P [user] - Pages a user
  • /QUIT or /Q - Exit the chat room
  • /RECENT or /R - Lists recent users of the chat room
  • /ROLL or /.#d% - Rolls #, % sided dice
  • /SET [variable] [value] - Sets a variable
  • /SET by itself for a list of variables
  • /SHOW or /S - Displays status of user variables
  • /WHISPER or /WH [user][message] - Sends a message to a specific user
  • /YELL or /Y[text] - Send a message to all users on all channels

See you in #linuxjournal soon!

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