After having a meetup of the photography group “Incredible Bengal” it was decided to plan our schedules and meetings at IRC, network DALnet, channel #incrediblebengal. Only a few people know about IRC and also all are not techies. The people of this group are Windows, Fedora and Ubuntu users. So I was asked by a senior member Aloke da to write a small “how to use IRC” for the new users. I hope this will help them 🙂
This document covers installing and using X-chat, a popular IRC client.
How to install X-Chat :
Fedora Users :
To check if you have X-Chat installed in your system, type this:
$rpm -q xchat
If its not installed, install it with this:
$su -c 'yum install x-chat'
Now you can open x-chat by Applications>Internet>IRC
For more information see here..
Windows Users:
Download X-Chat from here. After that install it into your system.
Now you can open x-chat by Start>All programs>xchat-2
Ubuntu Users:
To check if you have X-Chat installed in your system, type this:
$dpkg -s xchat
If its not installed, install it with this:
$su -c 'apt-get install xchat'
Now you can open x-chat by Applications>Internet>IRC
How to begin with it:
Now you have already installed X-Chat in your system. After opening the X-Chat window you will have to edit the blanks as shown:
Start with writing your nick. Put a second and a third choice as shown. Then you give in your user name which may or may not be same with the nick and finally write your real name.
After that select the DALnet network and click on edit.
Highlight irc.dal.net there. Write #incrediblebengal at “Channels to join” and close it.
Now click on connect.
Then you are taken to the channel #incrediblebengal where you can see this :
Now you are ready to type here 🙂
Basic IRC commands on DALnet:
For help type this command and then press enter :
/nickserv help
For getting help about a particular command type this and then enter:
/nickserv help <command>
Example:
/nickserv help register
For registration of your nick :
/nickserv register <password> <yourmailid>
Example:
/nickserv register 12345 mailtoria@gmail.com
After this a verification mail is sent to your inbox and you need to authorize it according to the instruction in your mail.
For identification of user type this and enter :
/nickserv identify <password>
Example :
/nickserv identify 12345
For messaging a person at the main channel:
Use first letter of the person as on the list and then press tab to get the full name.
Example:
r+”tab” will do instead of typing ria
For personal messaging:
/msg <user_to whom_you_are_messaging> <message>
Example:
/msg ria how are you?
I have written some of the basic commands. Other commands can be used by taking help of the “help” command according to your requirements.
I hope this few things will help the newbies at IRC.
Ria With Python 