IRC

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of real time 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.

Not everyone who works with Free Geek hangs out on IRC, but a number of coders, system administrators, and people involved in helping new Free Geeks start up do.

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/.