Connecting to Freenode IRC with XChat
XChat is a very popular and free Open Source IRC client, which is available for the most popular desktop platforms like Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. For Linux, it usually comes included with your distribution of choice, for the other platforms you can download precompiled packages from various locations (see the Resources section below for download links). It provides a large number of features and is very extensible using plugins.
[edit] Connecting to Freenode.net
- Make sure that you have Xchat installed
- Start xchat
- When you start XChat for the first time, it comes up with a Network List, which allows you to choose your nick name and the IRC Network you would like to connect to
- If you have used XChat before, you can configure the Network options by selecting XChat -> Network List from the menu or by pressing CTRL+S
- Select and enter your nickname
- In the Networks selection list, click on Freenode and press the Edit... button to verify the settings:
- By checking Auto connect to this network on startup Xchat will automatically establish the connection when you start it up the next time. You can actually select this option for multiple IRC networks at the same time!
- In the Edit Freenode window, you can add the channels you would like to join automatically after connecting to the server.
- If you have registered your nick name with the nick server, you can also provide the required password here.
- Close the Edit Freenode window when you are done and click the Connect button in the Network list window to establish the connection.
- Xchat will connect to the server and join the channels you selected. You can switch between the channels by clicking on the channel name
- That's it - please refer to the Xchat Documentation for instructions on how to further configure and use XChat! It provides a vast number of configuration and customization options which give you plenty of ways to tweak it to your preferences and requirements.