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TooCreative

I really like to use IRC on the terminal via Irssi.

Can Irssi be used to access this matrix thing?

If not, is there some nice matrix command line client in the Debian repos?

Or maybe someone could just make an IRC server which is a bridge to matrix?

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Matrix is based on an open documented protocol, which means it welcomes multiple implementations. There are several terminal-based clients, which you can see on their current client list, and I wouldn't be surprised if more appear over time: https://matrix.org/clients/

There are also Matrix-IRC bridges that already exist: https://matrix.org/bridges/#irc

None of the terminal ones seem to be in the Debian repos.

I'm not sure anyone has written an irssi plugin specifically, but there's an excellent weechat plugin (https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix). As others have said, there's also matrix-ircd which exposes all of Matrix as an IRC server you can connect to from whatever IRC client floats your boat, but you end up speaking the subset of Matrix which can be represented as IRC, which is a bit of a shame.

> Can Irssi be used to access this matrix thing?

Yup. I haven't tried it myself and I think there are different ways to set that up but this could be a start (I think this is more targeted towards bridging matrix and IRC, which may or may not be what you want): https://matrix.org/bridges/#irc

> If not, is there some nice matrix command line client in the Debian repos?

Not sure what's in the mainline debian repos but there are some decent CLI clients, yes: https://matrix.org/clients/

If you're OK with weechat you can use that already :)

IMO matrix is already mature to be an IRC killer (caveat federated/decentralized identities, if that's something you require but arguably IRC doesn't have that either).

Can you explain the caveat? Federated identity seems to be what matrix already offers. Even if the main instance at matrix.org dominates.

Federated/decentralized identity is on the roadmap and being worked on - while yes, Matrix conversations and discovery are fully decentralized and federated, each account is still tied to a single homeserver through the domain (e.g. user@matrix.org still depends on the matrix.org homeserver to use their identity)

Arguably none of the alternatives have this quality either but I find it worth pointing out as a requirement for next-generation IM.

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/neilalexander/... is the latest work on this ftr :)

There's a weechat plugin for matrix that's being actively developed here https://github.com/poljar/weechat-matrix-rs.

> If not, is there some nice matrix command line client in the Debian repos?

There is the gomuks client (https://github.com/tulir/gomuks) for the command line. I'm not sure about the Debian package, though.

There's matrix-ircd which exposes Matrix servers as an IRC server. So, I'm pretty sure what you want already exists.

You could use an IRC Bridge https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc As for direct access from the command line, I don't know.

Be aware that the bridges between matrix.org and IRC are often unreliable.

this has historically due to the matrix.org (where those bridges live) being thoroughly overloaded. these days (since ~May) we have it under control and it should be pretty robust.

Obligatory https://xkcd.com/1782/

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