Do you want to talk to fellow OCLUG members in real-time, outside of the meetings, and not have to play email tag on the mailing list? Well there's a wonderful new (old) technology on the internet, Internet Relay Chat. We have registered some channels to use on IRC.

If there is enough interest we may try to work out a schedule for people to meet in the chat room at different times so you can check in and there will be a better chance someone else will be there!

Point your favorite IRC client to: irc.freenode.net
The FreeNode network is owned and operated by volunteers, and is run on Linux servers.

Please note, you cannot open these in a web browser, you MUST use an IRC client,
and enter in either one of these servers into the appropriate "Server" field (see note)

Then join one of these channels:
#oclug - for general discussions, technical help
#linuxdemo - for discussion about Linux Demo Day, or any other demonstration

Also for those interested in Amateur (Ham) Radio as I am, we have:
#hamradio- for discussions involving Ham Radio & Linux

To join a particular room, the easiest way is to type "/join #[roomname]" into the text chat entry field, and substitute the appropriate room name, being sure to include the "#" in front.

If you do not have an IRC client, here are a few links for the major platforms:
(Most Linux distributions come with at least one nowadays)

Windows:
mIRC- www.mirc.com
XirCON- www.xircon.com
X-Chat for Windows- www.xchat.org
BitchX for Windows- www.bitchx.org

Mac:
ShadowIRC- www.shadowirc.com
MacBitchX (OS 8/9)- www.bitchx.org
MacBitchX (OS X)- www.bitchx.org

Linux:
X-Chat- www.xchat.org
BitchX- www.bitchx.org
KVIrc- www.kvirc.org
EPIC- www.epicsol.org

Other UNIX:
ircii- www.eterna.com.au/ircii

Or if you need to find another one, you can go to:
www.freshmeat.net to search an exhaustive database of Linux/UNIX files.
If you are using FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD, you should be able to find IRC clients for these on freshmeat as well, and they usually have some in their own package repositories.

If you need help getting on IRC, please email LinuxKnight, and tell him your particular platform (Linux/UNIX, Windows, Mac, etc).

Note- I just checked with Mozilla 0.9.6, and I'm not sure what other browsers it might work with- but if you want you can try this link, it will open the Mozilla chat client "Chatzilla" if it is installed:
irc://irc.freenode.net

(Note using the irc:// instead of http:// or etc... I'm not sure if this is a standard new protocol prefix, or just something that Mozilla does.)

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