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Comment by fcanela | Hacker News Reader

Probably someone just discovered it.

I think it is relevant in the Slack-oriented era. I would love IRC getting the hype instead: the protocol and software is open and easy to understand.

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Have you had a look at WeeChat + Glowing Bear? The idea is to keep WeeChat running permanently on a server (screen/tmux) and to connect to it from a browser (desktop or mobile). All the logs and highlights will be there, and read status is synced. No cloud, communication is direct between browser and WeeChat via websockets.

Disclosure: I am a maintainer of Glowing Bear. Join us in #glowing-bear if you have questions :)

That’s the same as Quassel + Quassel-Webserver ;)

In the end, as long as the people use a FLOSS IRC client, it’s beneficial for the entire community.

Judging by the screenshots it does look quite similar, nice. Do you know whether it works well on mobile? That's one of the main selling points for many users. The tmux+ssh user experience is not that great on mobile :)

The weechat android experience is amazing. I actually switched to weechat from irssi and irssi connectbot specifically for it.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ubergeek42...

Quassel did not have nearly as nice a client for mobile and I really prefer terminal based clients on non-mobile platforms.

Quassel has QuasselDroid for mobile, and a plugin for irssi for PC.

So, it's comparable.

I've since moved to IRCCloud, but when I tried Weechat Android it was very rough around the edges.

I hear it has improved significantly in the last year or so, development has picked up speed again. And I say that working on the competition ;)

Well, for quassel, there's also a mobile app. On the Play Store the beta version is quite neat, and the F-Droid version. The normal Play Store version is from 2013, though.

I - maintainer of QuasselDroid - am currently working on a next version, though, which will take another few months.

For iOS, though, quassel-webserver is the best you'll be able to get, and it's quite meh on mobile.

Glowing Bear is friggin' amazing, I've been using it for more than 6 months now and it's pretty much the best irc experience you can get! Thanks!

I also use weechat (on cygwin since they don't have native windows builds) + glowing bear. It's great as long as you're at a PC, but it's missing a way to get notifications (for example when you receive a /msg or /notice) when you're away from the PC but have your mobile with you.

Yeah, that's hard to implement without a central server component or annoying setup. I use IrssiNotifier (despite the name, it also works with WeeChat). It's not great but I get push notifications for highlights on my phone.

Yeah, it would have to be a push notification. Running an actual IRC client that had to maintain connection on mobile would destroy your battery.

Anyone aware of anything that works on mobile that does this?

For quassel there seem to be options: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12065792

Well irssinotifier uses Google cloud messaging (is that the current name? The Google push service). It encrypts messages on the server and decrypts them in the client, using a passphrase. It's a technically neat solution but a bit annoying to set up.

It has a script for weechat (and of course irssi), not sure about other clients.

Or you can use pushbullet /..., there should be scripts for any popular scriptable client

+1 for Glowing Bear. I haven't been on for anywhere near 6 months but I know I will be eventually.

The only problem about it for me, is that having search and offline messages is not possible by default. I'm using IRC for the #redis community channel, and joining a discussion after my laptop has been in my bag for a couple of hours is not really feasible.

To my understanding you can setup Quassel as a bouncer on a server, so when you reconnect it will update all you missed, you just need a cheap VPS or another desktop to connect through elsewhere. Some channels also have searchable logs via bots as well. Ironically BotBot.ME which is powered by redis doesn't have a bot at #redis but oh well...

That's not out-of-the-box

There are other out-the-box alternatives. IRCCloud was mentioned in comments.

IRCCloud disconnects you after 2 hours of idle time unless you pay them

It is on linux. Ubuntu has the combined client and the separate client / server ones ready to go.

Personally, I have a tiny VPS running weechat, tmux, and mosh that let's me keep history and stay connected 24/7.

can you please elaborate more? I am looking to setup something similar. I have minimal linux knowledge and I have done a basic setup of weechat+screen.

Sure, here's how it works with tmux:

1. Install weechat, tmux, mosh

2. Make sure firewall allows mosh

3. Start a named tmux session (tmux new -s weechat)

4. Start weechat

5. Detach session (Ctrl-a d)

6. Connect using mosh and attach the session (mosh myvps 'tmux a -t weechat')

Makes no sense to me, having bouncers (which have existed since forever) that let you connect using any client, not just Quassel.

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