IRC

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of realtime Internet chat. It is mainly designed for group (many-to-many) communication in discussion forums called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message.

Many people stay logged on to IRC for many days. It's best to ask your questions even if you think people are not around.

Channels

• #freegeek on irc.freenode.net is the main channel, which is used by most Free Geek internet people.
• #freegeek-van on irc.freenode.net is the main channel if your looking for canadians.
• Other channels are some times created (on irc.freenode.net)for special topics. an example would be the now defunct #freegeek-distro

Tools

There are many IRC clients, these are the ones I see around

• Irssi is popular with the screen users
• X-Chat is popular with the point and click crowd.

some additions

• Kopete: http://kopete.kde.org
• Pidgin: http://www.pidgin.im/
• BitchX: http://www.bitchx.com/

More information on IRC can be found on the web, for instance at http://www.irchelp.org/.