I can’t post links. But HexChat announced that this is going to be the final release on their news page.
This will be the last release I make of HexChat. The project has largely been unmaintained for years now and nobody else stepped up to do that work.
What will it be replaced with?
I recommend https://nheko-reborn.github.io/ Matrix client. Closest thing to IRC UI.
No replacement for an IRC client planned for now. IRC doesn’t seem to be important enough anymore to warrant a default installed IRC client.
Off-topic here. Needs to be discussed in the appropriate tickets.
removed from the wiki.
Linux Mint now includes joined Matrix and includes Element after discontinuation of HexChat Monthly News – April 2024 – The Linux Mint Blog
Following the discontinuation of Hexchat we announced efforts to make IRC easier with the development of a new custom chat room application called Jargonaut.
When we announced it though, we heard some of your feedback about Matrix. We tested that as well and started using it.
Today we’re announcing we’ll be moving to Matrix and integrating Element into Mint 22 instead of Jargonaut.
Can you guys look into shipping Nheko? Looks a bit similar to IRC and is the most efficient Matrix client that is not built with Electron.
If there is still interest in including an IRC client in Whonix I would be partial to weechat. In comparison to other clients it has an active development community and the internals are well understood.
weechat FAQ has an entry about best-practice configuration for privacy. In short disabling CTCP, custom quit messages that leak the client information and DCC functionality. It is not anything new but this is all functionality that has been tested upstream.
Not sure how strict stream-isolation is required when considering the inclusion of applications to Whonix. However a proxy ‘helper’ could potentially enforce stream-isolation between IRC connections if desired.
With regards to Matrix. Besides Element not being included in Debain it is also based on the Electron application framework which is based on Chromium. Chromium is known to have issues with SOCKS proxy leaks. If this impacts Element it is debatable how much this actually matters for an environment such as Whonix and a single instance of Element that can only interact with a single account at a time.
In addition the default functionality of Element leaks the usage of Element on a given platform when naming a generated key-pair used for E2EE which is publicly visible for a given Matrix account.
