Irssi

The command line IRC client. That's it. Irssi is FOSS (licensed under the GPLv2) and is available for Linux, BSD, Solaris, Apple and Cygwin (under Windows). It was developed by Timo Sirainen and was released in the beginning of 1999.

Installing

With apt sudo apt-get install irssi

It is rather light-weight, being only 2 392 kB on disk.

With other package managers, distros and platforms, see the following link: Get Irssi

Getting around

Connect to rajaniemi.freenode.net -- the closest freenode IRC server and join #itcollege channel. Not an issue nowadays, but imagine being stuck on a 56 kB modem with top speeds through dial-up and the copper wire are about 12 kB, maxing out at 30 kB, if local.

Connecting

/connect server-address where server address is, well, alphanumeric server address.

Name

Your default nickname (under Ubuntu) will be your username. You can change it by entering /nick your-new-username

You should register your username if you plan staying for longer and don't want anyone to abuse it by messaging NickServ /msg nickserv REGISTER <password> <email>

Chat rooms

To list all chat rooms type /list Might not be a good idea to do, considering there are about 12 000 channels. To search for a specific channel might be more useful to search via browser or know beforehand where you want to connect to.