[PLUG] Joining IRC channels using Riot/Matrix (and some IRC tips)

[Dhanesh B. Sabane]

Hello pluggies!

Over the past year or so, we've talked a lot about Matrix and our
plans to bridge the current IRC channel (#pluggies on freenode) with
the native Matrix room we have. Although those plans haven't
materialised, we have seen some huge improvements in Matrix which
allows users to seamlessly connect to IRC channels, directly, over
various IRC networks/servers.

Most of this "talk" is spread across various emails on the mailing
list and I thought it will be better if we have a single email that
curates this information so that it becomes easy for people to find.


### Matrix:

The following links should everyone understand the Matrix project:

Website : https://matrix.org/

FAQs: https://matrix.org/faq

I'd specifically like to point to the "bridges" part about Matrix.

Link: https://matrix.org/bridges

And if you'd like to know which IRC networks / servers are supported
by the matrix.org team, you can have a look at the GitHub wiki.

Link: 
https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/wiki/Bridged-IRC-networks

Matrix is currently being used heavily by FOSS communities these days.
Earlier this year, the KDE community announced Matrix as their
official collaboration platform.

Link: 
https://dot.kde.org/2019/02/20/kde-adding-matrix-its-im-framework


### Riot:

Riot is a messaging client that uses the Matrix network and was
developed by the same team.

Website: https://about.riot.im/

The client is available on all major platforms.

The terms Riot and Matrix are used interchangeably and usually mean
the same thing - the instant messaging / communication platform.


### Using Matrix as an IRC bouncer

As mentioned earlier, Matrix provides a bridge to IRC networks/servers
and Freenode is one of them. You can use the Riot client and connect
to any IRC channel. The following link should help you understand how:

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-irc/wiki/Guide:-How-to-use-Matrix-to-participate-in-IRC-rooms

The guide starts off by instructing you to register a IRC nick via the
client. If you already have a registered IRC nick, you can directly
use that instead of registering a new one.

However, if you are like me and for some weird reason you'd like have
a different nick when you connect through Riot while still enjoying
the privileges of your main IRC nick, you can always "group" the two.
Here's how you can group two IRC nicks:

http://www.geekshed.net/2010/03/grouping-a-nick-why-and-how/

In my case, I'm "dhanesh95" when I'm using HexChat and "dhanesh95|m"
when I'm using Riot/Matrix.


### But why would you want to use Riot/Matrix for IRC?

- The biggest advantage is that you are never disconnected. As the
previous heading suggests, it acts as your IRC bouncer.

- Another advantage is that you get to use a modern UI for connecting
to an IRC channel. Checkout RiotX which will be out soon:

https://medium.com/@RiotChat/introducing-the-riotx-beta-for-android-b17952e8f771

It is obvious that some of the features here won't be available for
the IRC channels, but you are always treated with a beautiful UI. :)

- Because Riot is available on all major platforms, you can use it on
any or all of your devices. This way you are never physically
disconnected too. :)


### Some additional suggestions:

If you are new to Matrix and this email has inspired you to setup a
account, I'd suggest not to use the default https://matrix.org server
provided by the Riot app. As it is a "decentralised" service, you can
always sign up on different servers which are (physically) closer to
your location and enjoy a great service. If everyone flocks to the
matrix.org server, there is no point in "decentralisation" and we are
essentially centralising everything on matrix.org.

So which other servers are available?

If you are looking for servers maintained by contributors and
developers from Indian FOSS communities, any one of the following will
be a good one to choose from:

1. https://poddery.com
2. https://diasp.in

You can find a list of other servers on the following link:

https://the-federation.info/matrix|synapse

Note that if you are choosing a server from the above link, choose one
that has a version >= 1.0.0


### But I'm old school and would only like to use IRC

If you are like Tejas (whereistejas) who likes to use good old IRC,
that is cool too. In fact, Tejas is currently the coolest person on
our IRC channel right now. You can follow his footsteps and setup your
own system which will always keep you connected to the IRC channel.
Now that's a lot to explain in a single email, so I'll just point to
the series of posts that Tejas has written on his own blog where he
explains why IRC is a big deal and how to do it the right way.

Link: https://whereistejas.github.io/


I hope this post proves useful in one way or the other.

Looking forward to some enthusiastic participation and interesting
discussions over the IRC channel!

Cheers! :)

-- 
Dhanesh B. Sabane
https://dhanesh95.gitlab.io
PGP ID: 0xB69A98C9C1642329
Fingerprint: 9655 11F2 0D18 E76A 2396 D64D B69A 98C9 C164 2329