Libera IRC Channels Sorted by Number of Users

I’ve been back on IRC over the last year or 2 and been enjoying it. It’s obviously not as wildly active as it used to be, but you still find very smart people to answer questions and/or chat about random stuff, and most of the big open source projects have large channels which can be interesting to hang out in.

I don't think it's working. It's showing 20 users for all channels.

I've been using IRC again recently after a long break. I've been struggling to pick a client. I'm on Debian+KDE so I've been using Konversation, but it crashes after a couple hours (so I dont see conversations until I restart it).

I've been pleased to see that IRC still has community. There's something that makes IRC feel safe that I didn't get when I tried Discord.

Sadly the old Libera <-> Matrix bridge has been permanently retired. Thankfully, some projects (KDE, for example) run their own bridges for their rooms.

My IRC network seems to have been delisted :(

I wonder why (my net is "DarkScience", and would be 14th in the top 100): https://netsplit.de/networks/?query=maverick

:'(

#linux has 2198 users right now. That might be the largest.

What is everybody's favorite channel?

I find #python pretty good (1501 users!). Also #debian, #php, #javascript, #math and #statistics.

#startups was great in the past but is kinda empty at the moment.

I was active on a channel called #digi in the late 90s. A few years ago, I downloaded an IRC client on the remote chance it was still around.

Not only was it still active – many of the same people were still in the room.

I've recently retired my self-hosted bouncer (znc) and switched to IRCCloud (https://www.irccloud.com).

Can recommend it to everyone, having a decent mobile app, history sync, push notifications and just having it open in a browser tab makes a big difference and I'm using IRC much more again, even if it's just following some discussions on #postgresql or various hackerspace channels.

This information doesn't appear to be accurate, I'm in libera.chat channels with hundreds of users that don't appear in this list.

Weird that #Xen is listed #2, since:

1. After Freenode imploded, Xen officially moved to oftc.net

2. A couple of years ago, we then officially moved to Matrix

But then it looks like there are only 20 users in all the channels on the front page (including #Xen)? That seems rather low for the network which was meant to have taken over freenode.

Such fond memories of IRC. When I was in college sometime in '93 I had to compile some source on a VMS system the college gave me access to and bingo, I was connected to a US server efnet. Such good times, interacting with many weird and wonderful people back then.

If you are a fan of free software and you are at least slghtly backgammon-curious, join us at #bgammon, home of https://bgammon.org

A decade ago I used to be quite active in several of these popular channels, but I remember them having on the order of 2000 joined nicknames. Has this changed, or am I misremembering?

The channel I frequent the most has 6 users in it. It's not about the quantity, it's about the quality.

;)

Anyone have any #weed chan stories from back in the day they’d like to share perchance?

Not working. It's not listing various channels that I am in.

container of znc https://hub.docker.com/_/znc

and irssi is the way to go

(finds the first channel I read on page 7)

Aside from inertia, is there any reason to prefer using IRC over XMPP?