I’m just using Matrix instead since it has the communities I want and it has proper encryption and modern features that you expect from chats these days.

I’ve used hexchat a little from mint and fedora. i think i used it on windows 7 once too but its been awhile since i was on windows lol.

haven’t really been on irc enough to know where all the cool kids hang out… but i guess it depends what you are looking for.

i know that, hypothetically speaking, if someone were interested in accessing servers where epub/mobi copies of books were available, that unchecking the “use SSL” option is sometimes very helpful and they would probably find guides for that kind of thing on the most popular community of lemmy.dbzer0.com (warning AFAIK this is a very leftist non-free speech instance - an alt account w different name is recommended). Being vague cuz not sure of EH policy when it comes to mentioning this kind of thing