Chat

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A lot of people like to go into chat rooms on the Internet, and it would be a gross oversight if we did not at least give this topic a cursory overview. The idea of chat software is simple. You connect to some chat server, and everyone connected can participate in a live conversation via the Internet. To chat you must have access to a chat server and a chat client. (Just do a Web search for chat room on Google or Yahoo!. You should find quite a few.) Linux comes with one called IRC Chat, shown in Figure 13.32.

Figure 13.32: The IRC Chat program.

Once you have located a chat server you want to use, you will need to enter that server’s information into the Chat application. If you click on the New Server button at the bottom of the screen, you will be presented with a screen like the one shown in Figure 13.33, where you can enter all the server’s particulars.

Figure 13.33: Server information.

You should notice that many popular chat servers are already listed in the software. At the top of the screen you list your real name and any nickname you may want to use. When you are ready to chat, click the server you want to use and click the Connect button. You will be ready to chat away the hours!

On a more technical note, a chat room actually uses channels, not unlike your television, in order to accommodate the various chats going on. A typical chat server will host multiple channels, each dedicated to a particular topic. You will find a channel dedicated to virtually any topic you might like. A simple place to start would be to go to any search engine you like and type in your topic and the words “IRC channel.” For example, you could type in “Linux IRC channel,” and you would find a plethora of chat channels ready for you to use.

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