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Hexchat
Patrick Griffis (aka “Tingping”), known for his work on many open-source projects (GNOME, Flatpak, Gnome-MPV, Meson, etc.), announced the end of the Hexchat project:
I’ll take the opportunity to link to Patrick’s blog and commit for those of you who want to send him a donation or just thank him for his work:
In Linux Mint, Hexchat has been the default IRC client since 2014.
Before that Linux Mint shipped with Xchat, which Hexchat was based on. I can’t remember the last time we shipped without an IRC client, if we ever did.
Going forward, since Hexchat is discontinued, we need to either remove it from the default selection or replace it with another application.
Hexchat has been rock solid but we’ve been thinking about replacing it for a couple of years.
We didn’t know it was going to be discontinued but we faced two growing issues with it.
It’s one of the very few remaining applications in our software selection which doesn’t scale on an HiDPI screen. It would have needed to migrate to GTK3. It was a lot of work for Hexchat and that never happened.
It’s also is a full-featured IRC client. IRC? Yes IRC. The open protocol which divides our community.
IRC
Some of you think IRC is extremely important, some of you think it’s archaic and some of you have never heard of it.
In the 90’s IRC was popular on UNIX terminals way before we had Linux, Windows 3.1 or the Internet at home. Just like email or the Web, it goes way back and it doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s an open protocol. Anyone can make an IRC server or an IRC client.
Discord is modern and easy to use but there’s only one Discord implementation. IRC is an open protocol. This is important because it creates tensions which we need to address.
Die-hard IRC users are very proud of this and look down on closed alternatives, and shall I say, rightly so.
Younger users which sometimes have been using Discord even before they moved to Linux expect chat programs to work a certain way and can also look down on IRC. And again, I’d be tempted to say rightly so.
IRC clients are made for IRC users. Users are expected to know what IRC is and how to use it.
People often wonder what Hexchat is when they see it in the menu and don’t understand what happens when they launch it. When they land in the support channel and ask “What is this?” they’re not always welcomed properly.
Jargonaut
There are IRC clients written in GTK3 which are HiDPI compatible, but replacing Hexchat with one of them doesn’t really solve our problem.
What Linux Mint needs, first and foremost, is a place for people to ask questions to other users.
An IRC client can provide that but it’s not dedicated to doing that. So with that in mind we started working on a new app called Jargonaut.
Jargonaut will be a dedicated app. It will do just that and do it better.
Although it uses the IRC, it won’t be developed as an IRC client. It will support pastebin/imgur via DND, uploading your system specifications, troubleshooting and many features which have nothing to do with IRC. Yet you won’t be able to join channels or perform common IRC commands.
Hexchat was a great IRC client which helped us make a relatively good support chat room. We’re hoping Jargonaut will help us make this chat room even better and much easier to use.
If you want to follow our work on this new app visit https://github.com/linuxmint/jargonaut.
Jargonaut is an XAPP so it’s designed to work on all Linux distributions and all desktop environments.
Note: It’s only a few days old so it’s currently using #minttest on irc.spotchat.org. It will eventually move to #jargonaut and a different server. Linux distributions will be able to set custom defaults via gsettings overrides. In Linux Mint we’re planning to make it connect to #linuxmint-help and #linuxmint-chat on Spotchat.
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