 Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. Today I'm going to be doing a brief tutorial on basically how to get started with IRC. So there's a lot of things in this video I'm not going to cover because IRC is very complicated if you don't know what you're doing and I don't know what I'm doing. So this is basically how I'm going to show you how to get access to IRC using client and choosing a nickname, how to get registered with FreeNode and how to join a room. That's all I'm going to cover. A lot of rooms have their own jargon that you're going to have to learn. A lot of different networks have different ways of registering which I'm not going to cover all of them. I'm just going to cover FreeNode. So that's what we're going to do today and this is so this shouldn't take too long and it's just very simple. Now, first we should start off with what is IRC. IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. Sometimes they call it Instant Relay Chat. I don't know why because that's not what it stands for. It's Internet Relay Chat. It's basically it's a collection of networks which are then a collection of channels for Internet Chat. This is basically this was the precursor to chat rooms back in the day. So IRC has been around for a long, long time. It existed long before something like AOL Instant Messenger existed in the zeitgeist of humanity. So we're just going to get through the basics and so we might as well go ahead and get started. I took a day off doing videos and I feel like I've completely lost all the things that I learned of doing videos along with talking. Talking is hard. You took a day off from talking and now all of a sudden you can't talk anymore. Anyway, so this is HexChat. H-H-E-X-C-H-A-T. I will put a link to HexChat in the description. You don't need this specific IRC client. You just need an IRC client. There are ones that are in the terminal. There are different ones that are, you know, have different features. If, you know, if you're on Windows or MacOS, they have different clients there. HexChat seems to be the most popular one on Linux. And it's very simple. Up here at the top, you type in your nickname that you prefer, a couple extra choices just in case these are, you know, your first choice is taken and a user name. This can be unique because I believe more than one person can have it. I'm not sure. This has always just worked for me. This is the handle that I always use. So I believe this is prepopulated with your username from your account on your computer. So this here is a link, a list of networks. Now, like I said, each network has a then collection of channels, most open source projects. I think you'll find use free notes. So that's what I'm going to focus on today because if you're using IRC chances are you're going to be wanting to mess around with IRC open sourced channels and such. So what we'll go ahead and do is join this one and hit connect. Okay. And this is what this is what IRC looks like when you first open it. You get a little pop up here asking you things you want to do. So with free node, most channels are going to require you to be registered with them. And you do that in a specific way. So what we're going to do here is we're just going to choose do nothing. Okay, so with free node, you have to do it. You have to deal with a bot called Nick serve. So you want to do slash MSG. I can't unfortunately I can't make this any bigger. So you're just going to have to look down here, all the way at the bottom where I'm typing. So you have to do. So if you do slash MSG Nick serve, help and commands, this will get you a list of commands. And the one that you're wanting to do is register. So you want to do slash MSG register. So actually what I'm going to do is I'll show you the help page for that command. Nick serve help register. And what this will do what it shows you exactly what you need to do in order to register so you do slash MSG Nick serve register. And then the password you want password. And the email address that you are going to use, once you've hit the enter on that I'm not going to do that because I've already done this. It will send you an email to that email address, and it will provide you with a Another command that you had to paste here using the verify command. This basically just verifies your email address is verify. And then I believe it will have your some code after that after that. So once you've done that you have to go through and actually log in. So you do that with Nick serve identify. And I'm going to pause the video while I put my password in so that nobody can see my password. So just give me a second. Okay, and I'm back I've scrolled up a little bit because one of the things you'll have to keep in mind use a password that you're not afraid to Show off a little bit because this is I don't know if it stores it in plain text but it definitely shows this in plain text. That's why I've scrolled up a little bit because it actually does show it right in this in this little private chat window. So you're not going to want if you do especially if you're doing this in public you don't want your password just to be flaunted about you know to everybody. Why that doesn't come through as like asterisk. I don't know maybe that's not something that's possible with this ancient technology I just maybe that's not possible. Anyways, so what do you do now I mean that's the question you've you've made it this far you've gotten registered you've now identified yourself to the point where you're logged in. What do you do now. Well now you choose a a a channel to go to so I'm going to join the Ubuntu channel not everybody knows. So there's the main Ubuntu channel is just called Ubuntu. So Arch Linux has their own group of channels Ubuntu has a whole bunch of different ones this is just the main one. So if we go ahead OK here we are now in the Ubuntu chat. And as you can see you can't get to the the history of the chat which is disappointing because I'd like to see like what were they talking about before. I got here but you apparently can't do that I'm not I mean maybe there's a way. It also looks like this is fairly not a lot of people here actually online that the people are online are the ones that are in bold here along the side. So we're not going to sit here and wait wait around for you know people to actually talk about something but not big this is now you're using IRC. And it's you know if you just wanted to one of the things you'll have to keep in mind is a lot of IRC communities have their own guidelines. So like the Ubuntu one has guidelines up here at this URL and you have to follow those otherwise you're going to get booted and a lot of almost every open source project that runs an IRC channel also has you know community guidelines that you have to follow. Look we got somebody new hopefully they say something that'd be cool over sitting here chatting. And it's basically if you want to you can have multiple channels open at the same time so if you want to add another one I will you go to server join a channel I'm going to join the Arch Linux Arch Linux newbie. Okay and we just okay and we're there and you can switch back and forth between them. And this one here doesn't seem to have it is very much activity either. But that's how you use IRC like and there are commands that you can use with that Nick serve that will allow you to do certain things with your account which you can use. You can go back through and do that help commands thing that I showed you how to do and that will allow you to change your password and such when you're used for you know like I said a lot of the other networks have the same kind of registration. Things. That you have to go through and do but they're done differently so they might they might use Nick serve I'm not sure this is just the one that free node uses. So that is IRC just in a brief brief nutshell if you have questions leave a comment below and I'll try to answer them as best I can like I said I'm not an expert at IRC as you can tell. But it's not that complicated once you get past the thing of learning how to register because that Nick serve thing there and free note is very is very complicated unnecessarily complicated because they don't actually have like a website that you can use to register like a normal you know thing you have to use their you know weird commands in order to do so. But that's IRC in a nutshell it's it's old it's been around. I think it's as old or older than email actually I'm maybe wrong about that. But that's all beside the point if if you enjoy this really brief tutorial give it a thumbs up if you didn't give it a thumbs down. If you'd like more open source and Linuxy content give us a subscribe and make sure you hit the notification bell to not miss any of those awesome these awesome highly produced just gems of videos I mean you can't get any better than this on the internet people. I don't know I mean why wouldn't you subscribe. That's a good question we'll see you next time.