Helpful Linux Tidbits

Irssi is a command line cliend for IRC, developed since 1999 and written in the beautiful language of C. It is a very good client with alot of options for those willing to learn a command line interface. If not, check out Xchat.

When I came upon a couple of install problems, I was recommended to connect to the Gentoo freenode channel with irc. I’ve used irc before – really got into mIRC in Windows, had a brief toke of Xchat. I think irc’s dope. Xchat to me was just to difficult to set up as I liked and I felt that I was missing something doing it. When I used mIRC, BitchX was all the talk. Now irssi is and I’m not leaving it.

Installing Irssi

Install irssi however you distro tells you to, for Gentoo:

I’mmore of a get my hands dirty, twist, tweak, learn by example type so I didn’t comb through all the pages of documentation but this guide should be enough to give you a basic setup. If you’re like me the minimum you should do is comb through the starter’s guide and get feel of it. Irssi installs very very raw with really nothing set up so be sure to add the few tweaks they recommend. After you do that fire up irssi and set your Nick:

Yes thats my nick, don’t try to take if from me! Irssi saves the name between sessions, but it won’t be reserved we’ll do that in a second.

Freenode is a great project that hosts alot of open source channels, including Gentoos help channel. If you ever run across them be sure to thank them, they do a great deed. To connect to a server:

Now join the channel:

Pretty easy huh? but there are a couple other things that arehandy to do, like automatically joining freenode when irssi starts. Typing /network will detail the pre-configured networks. If your irssi is set up like mine, Freenode isn’t one of the default servers built in. If it’s not add it and make connecting easier in the future:

The -auto command is optional and will automatically connect you to that server when irssi starts. You can also associate nicks with a network:

And channels in networks can be automatically set to join:

Setting up Freenode

The freenode faq is in good working order and can explain in better detail more about what freenode is and what a user can do. I just needed to register (this also reserves) my nickname:

You’ll need to respond to their email or you registration will be dropped.

I like to keep my nick hidden:

When joining freenode the nick will need to be registered every time. This though too can be done automatically:

Identd and irssi

Some servers require an identification daemon (identd) to be installed. linux-identd works nice for me:

Basic Commands

It’s not really necessary to read any more documentation unless more advanced functions are needed. Most of the basic commands can be seen with:

And /help command should provide all the information necessary to use it. The only commands I use are /j, /leave, /msg user, /away , /away(returns), and /quit.

And the key commands you might need are: alt+1, alt+2,… to switch between windows; and alt+p and alt+n to scroll up and down.

Tips and Tricks

If you’re in rooms with alot of people, seeing all the joins, parts, quits, afks can be distracting. You can turn them off with:

Or you can ignore them in all channels by using * instead of ##channelname.

Got a troll or someone who’s just having too much fun? You can ignore them for a specific amount of time:

to ignore them for an hour.

Resources

• Gentoo specific irssi guide
• Another Guide
• Screen and Irssi