The only IRC client I ever used was XChat. I decided to try something different and Irssi client was a great find. Irssi is a terminal based IRC client for Unix systems and is probably the best I have used till now.

Though I use Pidgin (formerly called Gaim) as my primary Internet Relay Chat client, I also installed Irssi, a text-mode IRC client. Why? --Because I use it to easily record an IRC channel's chat activity. How? --Here's how to do it:

Irssi is a popular IRC client. Its a very popular client for small window managers like fluxbox. This short howto will walk you though the steps for setting up a jail that only has a few commands in it and will help create a much safer IRC enviroment for you.

Finch is a text/console-based, modular instant messaging client capable of using AIM/ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN, IRC, Jabber, Napster, Zephyr, Gadu-Gadu, Bonjour, Groupwise, Sametime, SILC, and SIMPLE all at once. Terminal acts as the GUI for the finch... And you might fell in love with it only if you are comfortable with the bash terminal also...

In this article I will outline how to configure your IRC client to connect to the Freenode IRC network using SSL client encryption. This article includes instructions for Irssi, Empathy and Pidgin.

Finch is a TUI (text user interface) IM client for Linux which uses libpurple, the same library on which the GNOME IM client Pidgin is based on. Usually, if you have Pidgin installed, you should have Finch too, unless Pidgin was compiled with the text interface option disabled.

Anyone that has been reading these tips for any length of time knows that I am a command-line guy. It’s faster, more efficient, and more powerful. Sure, a nice GUI is great to look at, but to really get things done, give me the CLI any day. Even to this day I still use a text-mode e-mail client (Mutt) and text-mode IRC client (Irssi).

TTYtter is a console console Twitter client. It's not an application but a python script that allows you to use Twitter just like any advanced Twitter client, but within a terminal. And it's not just for posting tweets, but has advanced options like any other well-known Twitter desktop client.

XChat is a GTK client for IRC, available on both Linux and Windows. It is one of the most popular and feature-rich IRC clients on the Linux platform, together with Konversation and KVirc. Of course, there are very good clients like Irssi too, but I'm talking only about graphical clients here.