Cross-platform Mibbit is a web based Ajax IRC client. Opera includes a built-in IRC client. Pidgin is a multi-platform instant messaging client which supports IRC, as well as AIM, Yahoo, Facebook and several other protocols. Smuxi is an irssi-inspired, flexible, user-friendly and cross-platform IRC client for advanced users, targeting the GNOME desktop. Several terminal based IRC clients exist; popular ones include WeeChat and irssi. These two in particular are very feature rich and highly extensible - especially the former. Note that these are usually made for Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and OS X. There are numerous web clients that can be used to access IRC. These are often found on the website of the organization that has an IRC room or channel. These will usually limit you to access to a particular channel or network. HexChat is the successor to the most popular Linux client for IRC XChat. It can probably be found in the software repository of your Linux distribution of choice, if not preinstalled. Unlike XChat before it, HexChat is completely open source software and free of charge on all platforms. For Windows mIRC is the most popular IRC client available for Windows due to it being so easily modifiable. It is known as shareware and you are granted a 30 day license in which to try the software, after which you may still use the software, but are given a message asking that you register it for a fee of $20. Whilst mIRC is the most popular, there are a number of other free IRC clients available: ClicksAndWhistles, IceChat and many of the platform-independent IRC clients mentioned above. For Linux SourceForge hosts many IRC clients for Linux Konversation is a popular KDE IRC client, that usually comes with the install of the popular Kubuntu distribution. For Mac Popular Mac IRC clients include Colloquy, Ircle and Snak. Colloquy is free and open source.
