Review: HexChat

I’ve been using IRC since I was a teenager, and in spite of proprietary tools like Slack and Gitter or open alternatives like Mattermost, I keep returning to it. For one thing, a large part of the open source community still uses it for chatter and support, and networks like FreeNode are filled with wonderful and smart people.

My first IRC client was mIRC for Windows, and I still prefer graphical clients over text-mode interfaces. Simply put, if an interface is complex enough that it requires tabs, lists, and so on, I find that a graphical interface often offers advantages. (Radical, I know!) Hence, for a long time, I used XChat on Linux, and it definitely got the job done.

But XChat is no longer actively maintained. Fortunately, when this happens to a popular open source project, there’s a good chance it will get picked up by someone else. That’s why there is HexChat. It’s still basically the same software, with a few important updates like support for more encryption methods and Lua scripting. As of August 2016, the last release was in May.

The Hexchat/XChat user interface is very basic – you’ve got your channel list, your chat window, your user list, and your server list. You can configure pings if your name is mentioned, add your own custom scripts, transfer files, and so on. The UI is reasonably configurable (e.g., vertical vs. horizontal tabs). Parts of it are a bit clunky in ordinary ways (e.g., finding the right preferences in sections like “Chatting-General”, “Chatting-Advanced” can be tricky, and there’s almost no context-sensitive help).

But the most important part for me is that the client gets out of the way – it just works. I give it 3.5 stars, rounded up because of the effort to keep the tool alive under a new name. My only recommendation is to set up a bouncer like ZNC along with it. A bouncer will log messages for you even while you’re away, and keep you connected to an IRC network – eliminating much of the hassle compared with a web-based tool like Slack.