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Could anyone recommend a good free IRC client for Windows?

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60% accept rate
Closely related: superuser.com/questions/7547/… – Jonik Sep 7 '09 at 17:38
Still, not a duplicate. – ephilip Sep 7 '09 at 21:02
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8 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

ChipzIRC, pretty basic but all I need:

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There is also ChatZilla addon for Firefox:

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ChipzIRC looks pretty good. Thanks! – ephilip Sep 7 '09 at 17:16
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up vote 10 down vote

X-Chat 2

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Don't you have to pay for it after a while? – miloshadzic Sep 7 '09 at 16:43
No, X-Chat is free as in freedom. – J. Pablo Fernández Sep 7 '09 at 16:45
xchat.org/windows You have to pay after 30 days. – miloshadzic Sep 7 '09 at 16:48
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X-Chat is free, but official windows build is not. But there is unofficial build that is free: silverex.org/download – del-boy Sep 7 '09 at 17:32
@nagnatron - That seems to confuse people, yes. The one above is at the silverex.org/news – ldigas Sep 7 '09 at 18:34
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up vote 7 down vote

irssi is a rather good client thats been made available for windows as well.

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irssi is a great client for *nix, but on windows there are much simpler and better solutions. mIRC for example, xchat2, ... I really can't see why I'd want to use a cmd solution under windows, expecially considering it's command line terminal. – ldigas Sep 7 '09 at 18:36
The windows version of irssi can be run through cygterm, which emulates a proper shell. Miles better than the included command prompt. What you don't get, however, is a GUI. However, I find that preferable, especially for IRC, which is just text. Obviously people have different preferences. – fjut Sep 7 '09 at 20:41
To me cygwin seems like raping the system - unix on a windows OS, just seems unnatural. Second, for example, mirc vs irssi (which also requires cygwin if I'm to have a normal prompt) - why would I want to opt for the latter ? No gui, strange configurations ... and don't think I wouldn't know how to use it; I've done my share of irc-ing since the early ninetees; it's just that I don't see one advantage it has over today's solutions. Apart from the "coolness factor", which always attracted one sort of people. – ldigas Sep 7 '09 at 22:55
I agree on the cygwin thing, but it works. Obviously better if you have access to a unix machine somewhere so that you can leave a screen open. On the other hand, I see no GUI as a good thing. Less is more, especially when it comes to a protocol like IRC. There's a ton of stuff where I find console apps better than GUI apps, and IRC is one of them. – fjut Sep 8 '09 at 22:03
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@Idigas: Did you just call mIRC simple? – Macha Nov 10 '09 at 19:51
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up vote 4 down vote

I use Pidgin, which has IRC support among other things.

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Trillian also has IRC support, but Pidgin seems to be better to me. – Tom Sep 7 '09 at 16:59
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up vote 2 down vote

HydraIRC

Screenshots of it on the website are horrid. It's much better looking and very customizable. Damn Windows Classic theme.

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+1 ... despite the lack of flood protection :) – Molly7244 Sep 7 '09 at 19:27
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up vote 0 down vote

I use Miranda-IM, really more of a multi-protocol IM client, but the IRC support is great.

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up vote 0 down vote

I may as well throw Chatzilla into the ring.

Edit: I see someone already mentioned it farther down in their post, but I'll leave this here because it links to the standalone version of Chatzilla, which doesn't run as a FF addon.

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up vote -1 down vote

I always liked and used mIRC.

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This isn't free. I've already looked at mIRC. – ephilip Sep 7 '09 at 16:00
You're right. Sorry about that. – Riri Sep 7 '09 at 16:16
I don't think it ever forces you to pay, just becomes nagware. – Phoshi Sep 7 '09 at 16:39
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