{"slug": "irssi", "name": "irssi", "category": "communication", "category_name": "Email and chat", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 8, "warners": 0, "score": 4.133, "rising": 1.67, "first": "2025-11-17", "latest": "2026-10-11", "why": "I can't say it's hard to just run irssi inside of tmux and attach/detach as necessary remotely", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 5, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I can't say it's hard to just run irssi inside of tmux and attach/detach as necessary remotely", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://irssi.org/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["irssi", "Irssi"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 800681762, "item_id": 50042610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50042610", "by": "cykros", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can't say it's hard to just run irssi inside of tmux and attach/detach as necessary remotely", "excerpt": "Concord channels on Nostr (https://concordprotocol.org/clients/) are handy for avoiding the centralization and privacy issues of Discord while also avoiding the reduction in asynchronous and media-enhanced functionality you'd get with IRC. That said I can't say it's hard to just run irssi inside of tmux and attach/detach as necessary remotely. Nor is it hard to throw my media I'm sharing onto a web server. But yes, y", "context": "", "use_case": "IRC client", "switched_from": "", "story": "IRCv3"}, {"id": 791806912, "item_id": 49487932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49487932", "by": "opan", "date": "2026-08-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use irssi inside tmux from my phone a lot", "excerpt": "Besides the TUI program itself, you also have your terminal emulator (unless in a TTY) and possibly a multiplexer like tmux. I use irssi inside tmux from my phone a lot and you can get pretty precise control with keyboard shortcuts that make up for some of the flaws of a touchscreen. Like instead of mashing or holding the arrows to go back and fix a typo, I'll use the readline binds and hit esc and b a bunch of times", "context": "", "use_case": "IRC from phone", "switched_from": "", "story": "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"}, {"id": 781580498, "item_id": 48848781, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48848781", "by": "Bender", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For IRC there is irssi-otr", "excerpt": "Adding to this there is pidgin-otr and python-potr. For IRC there is irssi-otr. There was weechat-otr but I think it may have gone unsupported as their script did not work in python3. There is also ejabberd [0] that has OMEMO [1] preferred over OTR and PGP and supports many to many E2EE. Someone tried to MitM Jabber, discussion here on HN [2]. [0] - https://ejabberd.im/ [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO [2] -", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0 \u2013 Breyer: \"Our children lose out\""}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "jmclnx", "context": "Slackware user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45953836", "date": "2025-11-17"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["irc client", "irc from phone", "irc"], "compared": [{"slug": "tmux", "name": "tmux", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "vim", "name": "Vim", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "gnu-emacs", "name": "GNU Emacs", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "mpv", "name": "mpv", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041540", "title": "IRCv3", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985548", "title": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479837", "title": "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48843923", "title": "EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0 \u2013 Breyer: \"Our children lose out\"", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48356468", "title": "Linux Basics for Hackers", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47914814", "title": "Show HN: Matrirc \u2013 run irssi in 2026, talk to people on Matrix", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"compare": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 800688736, "item_id": 50043046, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50043046", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "i used to run irssi in screen back in the day", "excerpt": "It isn't hard, as i wrote i used to run irssi in screen back in the day when there wasn't another alternative, but that required me to have a VPS (i don't nowadays and i don't really want one because i don't want to bother with the admin side of things) and it is extra friction - and that is for someone like me who already has the knowledge to do it. For most people it is an insurmountable obstacle.", "context": "", "use_case": "IRC client", "switched_from": "", "story": "IRCv3"}, {"id": 800681762, "item_id": 50042610, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50042610", "by": "cykros", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can't say it's hard to just run irssi inside of tmux and attach/detach as necessary remotely", "excerpt": "Concord channels on Nostr (https://concordprotocol.org/clients/) are handy for avoiding the centralization and privacy issues of Discord while also avoiding the reduction in asynchronous and media-enhanced functionality you'd get with IRC. That said I can't say it's hard to just run irssi inside of tmux and attach/detach as necessary remotely. Nor is it hard to throw my media I'm sharing onto a web server. But yes, y", "context": "", "use_case": "IRC client", "switched_from": "", "story": "IRCv3"}, {"id": 800375872, "item_id": 50023492, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50023492", "by": "deniska", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "irssi running in screen (irc client, yes, occasionally I still talk to people on there)", "excerpt": "It's not exactly a cheap VPS, it's a server with 376 gb of ram my dad bought on ebay, put on co-location, and I help to administer it, and can create some VMs on it. But some of the things I do on these VMs are in principle similar to what I would do a $5 vps: - irssi running in screen (irc client, yes, occasionally I still talk to people on there) - my very small imgur-inspired image hosting (https://github.com/deni", "context": "", "use_case": "IRC client", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 791806912, "item_id": 49487932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49487932", "by": "opan", "date": "2026-08-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use irssi inside tmux from my phone a lot", "excerpt": "Besides the TUI program itself, you also have your terminal emulator (unless in a TTY) and possibly a multiplexer like tmux. I use irssi inside tmux from my phone a lot and you can get pretty precise control with keyboard shortcuts that make up for some of the flaws of a touchscreen. Like instead of mashing or holding the arrows to go back and fix a typo, I'll use the readline binds and hit esc and b a bunch of times", "context": "", "use_case": "IRC from phone", "switched_from": "", "story": "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"}, {"id": 781580498, "item_id": 48848781, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48848781", "by": "Bender", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For IRC there is irssi-otr", "excerpt": "Adding to this there is pidgin-otr and python-potr. For IRC there is irssi-otr. There was weechat-otr but I think it may have gone unsupported as their script did not work in python3. There is also ejabberd [0] that has OMEMO [1] preferred over OTR and PGP and supports many to many E2EE. Someone tried to MitM Jabber, discussion here on HN [2]. [0] - https://ejabberd.im/ [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO [2] -", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0 \u2013 Breyer: \"Our children lose out\""}, {"id": 773871381, "item_id": 48366961, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48366961", "by": "opan", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "irssi, aerc, stig+transmission-daemon", "excerpt": "Hosting a Minecraft server was pretty big for me. Learned about screen and tmux to keep it running and be able to detach and reattach. Learned vim to deal with configs on the headless server. Another thing that helped me learn a lot was what I call \"anime playlist management\", but may be too niche to recommend. Basically after I moved from VLC to mpv I had to create and add to playlists without a gui. I learned a lot", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux Basics for Hackers"}, {"id": 766787105, "item_id": 47924194, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47924194", "by": "johntash", "date": "2026-04-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Has everyone moved on from irssi to weechat?", "excerpt": "I like that this is an irc->matrix bridge instead of a matrix->bridge. I honestly don't use either much anymore, but I'll probably give it a try. I didn't know irssi was still maintained in 2026. There hasn't been a release in a while, but there are at least a few recent-ish commits. Has everyone moved on from irssi to weechat?", "context": "", "use_case": "IRC client", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Matrirc \u2013 run irssi in 2026, talk to people on Matrix"}, {"id": 738906290, "item_id": 46181643, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46181643", "by": "bullen", "date": "2025-12-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "TWM + emacs + irssi + mpv(ytdl)", "excerpt": "This is my desktop 2025: http://ett.host.radiomesh.org/film/HL2%20on%203588%20uConsole.mp4 (controls are impossible at first on 3588 uConsole, this was me playing without the usual bindings just to prove the performance so don't judge the gameplay) 3588 (10W) plays HL2 at 300 FPS and streams it at 60 FPS to twitch. Turns out 2025 was the year of the ARM linux desktop after all! TWM + emacs + irssi + mpv(ytdl)", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)"}, {"id": 735261382, "item_id": 45953836, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45953836", "by": "jmclnx", "date": "2025-11-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "mutt, tin, irssi", "excerpt": "First on-topic, you can use runnit on Slackware: https://slackbuilds.org/repository/15.0/system/runit/ Now another point of view :) As a Slackware I stick with release because it is extremely stable and my main System (Thinkpad W541) works fast as most modern systems with 16G mem and 8 CPUs. If I ever got a brand new system (doubtful), I would use current until the next release. Also, I like the fact I do not have to", "context": "Slackware user", "use_case": "IRC", "switched_from": "", "story": "Runit Linux: Complete Guide to Unix Init Scheme with Service Supervision"}]}