Internet Relay Chat

IRC, Internet Relay Chat

Most Sugar Labs chat takes place on IRC (see Internet Relay Chat).

• You can use a computer-based client to log in to IRC (such as Sugar IRC activity, Pidgin, X-Chat). This link should work for such clients, irc://irc.freenode.net#sugar.
• Or, use a browser add-on (like ChatZilla for the FireFox web browser, where the above link will also work).
• Easiest, might be this web browser-based service provided by freenode through qwebirc to chat on #sugar now.

IRC is mainly designed for group communication in discussion 'channels', but allows for personal chat and data transfer as well.

The Sugar Labs Community uses a series of channels in the irc.freenode.net network.

irc.freenode.net channels

General:
#olpc-help or irc://irc.freenode.net#olpc-help	Community help. If you need help using an XO or with Sugar, and you haven't asked anywhere else: try here first.
#sugar or irc://irc.freenode.net#sugar	For day-to-day Sugar development—a casual, friendly place where Sugar developers collaborate.
#sugar-meeting or irc://irc.freenode.net#sugar-meeting	A channel for scheduled Sugar Labs meetings. See the Sugar Labs event calendar.
#fedora-olpc or irc://irc.freenode.net#fedora-olpc	A channel for the Fedora development project for OLPC XOs and a Sugar distribution. See the project page.

irc.oftc.net channels

General:
#schoolserver or irc://irc.oftc.net#schoolserver	The meeting channel for the XS, the XO school Server. (Not active in September 2009.)

• See also OLPC:Communication channels.

How to use IRC channels

• A web-based chat for freenode.net channels is qwebirc, with nickname: (whatever you like), and channel: #sugar (or whatever other channel you're trying to get into).
• A web-based chat for other channels is Mibbit, with nickname: (whatever you like), server: irc.oftc.net, and channel: #schoolserver (or whatever other channel you're trying to get into). It also includes an in-line translation service that is helpful when other languages are used. (Connections via mibbit are no longer supported on freenode. You may wish to consider using http://webchat.freenode.net instead. Further information over at http://bit.ly/19JILF.)
• Some helpful resources are here, and this tutorial, which also includes basic commands.
• Learn about IRC etiquette. Try here, here, or here.
• For IRC under sugar, install the latest Sugar IRC activity.
• In Pidgin you can configure IRC and then Add a Chat to your Buddy list. Select the IRC channel from the drop-down menu, and enter the name of the channel. You can set Pidgin to open channels automatically whenever it starts up.
• In a traditional IRC client, you join a channel with the /join command, for example, enter /join #sugar in the input box.
• Connect to one of the above channels, and say hello. You will see a list of the handles (on-line names) of the people in the channel, and the conversation will appear in a scrolling window. Type your message in the command entry area, and press return.
• Instructions for using the meeting log robot are here.