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Comment by gnarbarian | Hacker News Reader

I've been using a similar client called thelounge for the past year and I really love it.

It's a node based IRC client you can install on a server and then connect to with a web browser.

It essentially turns IRC into slack/irc cloud, it has inline images/video, URL prefetching, push notifications, themes and custom css, mobile support, and allows you to idle indefinitely persisting your connection to your favorite channels across numerous devices. You can even hook it into active directory if you wanted.

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Yeah. This tool has essentially solved chat for me. In combination with bitlbee (a generic IRC-to-lots-of-protocols gateway), I've unified my chat needs onto one interface.

And the bit you fail to mention is that the client naturally adapts and works great on a phone. So the same chat logs and interface and channels go with me in my pocket.

I see bitlbee supports slack with libpurple. Have you been using that? How does it hold up with slack features like emojis, threads and so on?

I use bitlbee for jabber and sipe. I haven't played with slack, happily none of the communities I frequent are on slack. I wouldn't expect much in the way of proper feature parity though: it's an IRC gateway. It maps features to what IRC provides, and that's it.

Used to use this, until I realised it's memory usage goes over what my slot is actually capable of.

Does an IRC client/webserver really need several hundred megabytes of ram? I then began just tunnelling hexchat. Only needed to bypass a firewall for irc

You can adjust how many messages are saved in memory in the config, that may help

if it's re hosting video like mine does then yes.

That’s off by default, so it shouldn’t be the cause

Several months ago I switched from MacOS to Fedora.

Two things I really missed from MacOS that I thought didn't have a good alternative in Linux were Colloquy and Sequel Pro.

The Lounge via Docker Container and https://applicationize.me/ :

    docker run --detach \
            --name thelounge \
            --publish 9100:9000 \
            --volume ~/.config/thelounge:/home/lounge/data \
            --env THELOUNGE_HOME=/home/lounge/data \
            --restart always \
            -u "$(id -u $USER):$(id -g $USER)" \
            thelounge/lounge:latest

solved my IRC itch, and it works even better than Colloquy.

Still haven't found anything that comes close to Sequel Pro, though.

that's pretty slick, but you miss out on the best features (persistance/push notifications) if you're running it locally in a docker container.

It connects to a ZNC server on DigitalOcean.

Why not run thelounge on your VM then?

Maybe for speed. Local lounge installation would feel more like a desktop app.

Having Lounge reconnect to ZNC every time you start the app neglects any speed gains you'd have from running it locally. And it gives you overall a negative experience because unread markers and other things are reset.

why docker for such a small application?

thelounge start

Size doesn't matter. I don't have node or npm or ruby or PHP or go installed on my system, it's all in containers.

seems like overkill

>seems like overkill

Welcome to modern js development.

I am using that too. It was my way to use Slack before they shut down the IRC channels.

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