I'm trying to help a colleague establish a sustained connection to a few IRC channels on OFTC and I'm not sure what the best, simple thing is for this now.

Yes, I searched, but the internet is full of trash, so I'm back to looking for personal recommendations.

(I still just ssh+irssi+screen into my own server)

@pleia2 using the znc IRC proxy. That means I can use whatever IRC client I like.

@pleia2 I’m using a web based client called The Lounge from a docker container, it’s basically self hosted irccloud

@directhex Alas, that requires them to have access to a server with a persistent connection to run it from, and that amount of overhead is too much 😕

@keithp Still requires somewhere to run it that has a persistent connection, and they don't have one (and the overhead of managing one is a bit much). And many of the free/low cost shell accounts out there have long been blocked by major IRC networks due to abuse.

@pleia2 yeah, I can't think of any way to get a sustained IRC connection without running a persistent process somewhere. Let's hope someone knows better than me.

@keithp @pleia2 kind of cheating, but I just pay IRCCloud to do it for me ;)

@pleia2 chat.sr.ht works well for me. You'll need a sourcehut account but I think the free tier is enough. See also https://sourcehut.org/blog/2021-11-29-announcing-the-chat.sr.ht-public-beta/ and https://man.sr.ht/chat.sr.ht/.

@palmer @keithp It's not cheating, I heard mixed things about IRCCloud over the years, so I wasn't sure where things stand with them. Anything of note that the free tier doesn't provide that you find valuable?

@directhex @pleia2 is using actual IRCCloud not an option?

@maco @directhex It could be! I wasn't sure if they're the best thing to recommend to people these days, and if any servers are blocking them, it's been a few years since I've helped someone onboard to IRC 😅

@pleia2 @keithp IIRC the Slack connections was the big one for me. Combining that with the BNC functionality makes Slack actually usable.

@pleia2

For the small number of IRC channels I want persistence on, I use an #XMPP bridge, specifically irc.cheogram.com, which is a #biboumi instance.

There are a wide variety of decent XMPP clients for most platforms...

Though, honestly I long ago learned to just quit #IRC when I am not actually available... I used to struggle with not reading the entire backscroll history and having time in the day to do anything.

@maco @directhex Ah, with the free tier it doesn't keep you connected while inactive for more than 2 hours. $6/mo is a nice price point, but basically impossible for us to get approved as a work expense.

@palmer @keithp Turns out staying connected while idle for more than 2 hours is also a paid option 😕

@pleia2 @keithp oh, so that kind of makes the free tier useless...