IRC, Internet Relay Chat
Most Sugar Labs chat takes place on IRC (see Internet Relay Chat).
- The IRC activity allows access to IRC from within the Sugar environment.
- You can use a computer-based client to log in to IRC, such as Pidgin or X-Chat. This link should work for such clients: irc://irc.freenode.net#sugar
- Or, use a browser add-on, such as CIRC (for Chrome). Current versions of Firefox are no longer compatible with add-ons, so ChatZilla will only work if you are using a sufficiently older version of Firefox.
- 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 channel discussion archives
- Archives of many Sugar-related IRC channels are generated automatically by an IRC bot and are indexed here.
irc.freenode.net channels
| General: | |
| #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.) |
| #treehouse or irc://irc.oftc.net#treehouse | The meeting channel for the Treehouse - Hosting |
- 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 #sugarin 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.