IRC - Internet Relay Chat
Blinkenshell's official IRC channel: #blinkenshell @ irc.allshells.net (direct link: irc://#blinkenshell@irc.allshells.net) IRC Network: ["Allshells"]
If you've never heard of IRC before, or just want to join the chat immidiately without installing an IRC client on your computer, use one of the online web chat clients:
[http://blinkenshell.org/cgiirc/ CGI:IRC - Modern web browser required ]
[http://blinkenshell.org/pjirc/ PJIRC - Java plugin required ]
If you want your own IRC client, take a look at the step-by-step howto on installing and configuring XChat/Silverex to connect to our chat room: ["Howto/XChat"]
["Blinkenbot"] is a bot that logs all conversations and creates statistics available at: http://blinkenbot.blinkenshell.org/
Blinkenshell members can get autovoice in the channel if they want to, use the signup program to request it.
Rules
- No flooding or spamming (in channel or PM)
- No advertising
- No auto-rejoin after kick
- English only please
- Be nice! Don't start flamewars, insult others etc
Never heard of IRC before?
IRC is a protocol for communicating (chatting) over the internet. It stands for Internet Relay Chat and it's one of the most popular chat protocols, even though the protocol is quite old. If you have never used IRC before, you'll need to get an IRC-client (or use the webchat). Here is a list of clients:
[http://www.xchat.org/ XChat] - Good GUI client for UNIX-like OSes. Free software.
[http://silverex.org/ Silverex] - XChat for Windows. Free software.
[http://www.mirc.com/ mIRC] - Popular and old IRC client, maybe not be the best though. Shareware (free trial 30 days).
[http://www.hydrairc.com/ HydraIRC] - Newer client than mIRC, maybe a bit complicated. Proprietary.
More: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_IRC_clients Comparison of IRC clients on Wikipedia]
To connect to Blinkenshell's chat room:
Start up your IRC-client, choose a network and try to find some way of connecting to a server or network. Our IRC-network is not the most common, so it's probably not in the list of networks that comes with many IRC-clients. Therefore you have to add your own network, just add the server irc.allshells.net or irc.blinkenshell.org on port 6667. When you are connected to the network, just join our channel #blinkenshell and start chatting with us! 
Notable IRC Networks
- ["Allshells"] (Blinkenshell)
- ["Freenode"]
- ["IRCnet"]
- ["EFnet"]
- ["Undernet"]
- ["DALnet"]
- ["Quakenet"]