Articles tagged `#history`

irc

• A brief history of IRC: from OuluBox to Libera.ChatFrom a Finnish university computer in 1988 to live war reporting, the great network splits, the rise and fall of Freenode, and the stable niche IRC occupies today.
• EFnet: IRC's wild original, still runningEFnet is the direct descendant of the first IRC network — and still has no nickname registration, no channel services, no safety rails. How it works, why people love it, and how to survive there.
• Freenode vs Libera.Chat: what actually happened in 2021In 2021 the largest IRC network in the world imploded in a matter of weeks. The story of the Freenode takeover, the staff exodus that created Libera.Chat, and where both networks stand today.
• IRCnet: the European giant without a rulebookIRCnet split from EFnet in 1996 and remains one of the largest networks, strongest in Europe and the Nordics. No services, channel reops via !channels, and decades-old communities — a guide.
• Is IRC dead? The honest numbers in 2026IRC has been declared dead every year since the mid-2000s, yet hundreds of networks still serve six figures of concurrent users. The honest numbers, the decline, and why the floor turned out to be solid.
• mIRC in 2026: the Windows classic, thirty years onmIRC turned thirty in 2025 and is still updated. What the most famous IRC client of all time offers today, the scripting culture it created, and an honest take on whether to choose it now.
• What is IRC? Internet Relay Chat explainedIRC is the original internet chat protocol, older than the web itself and still very much alive. This article explains how IRC works, who uses it in 2026, and how to try it yourself in five minutes.
• What is IRCv3? The quiet modernization of IRCIRC's protocol froze in the 1990s — officially. Unofficially, the IRCv3 working group has spent the last decade retrofitting modern chat features: message history, reactions-ready tags, better auth. What IRCv3 is and what it changes.