jIRCii is a powerful cross platform Internet Relay Chat client. It is fully scriptable using a Perl-like language called sleep. The focus is to provide a console client experience with the advantages of a solid GUI. It includes DCC/CTCP support, the ability to connect to SSL servers, and over 65 built-in commands.

jIRCii requires Java 1.4.2 or later

jIRCii FAQ available Here

Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.

Pidgin can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AIM, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

Pidgin runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems. Looking for Pidgin for OS X? Try Adium!

Pidgin integrates well with GNOME 2 and KDE 3.1's system tray, as well as Windows' own system tray. This allows you to work with Pidgin without requiring the buddy list window to be open at all times.

Pidgin is under constant development, and releases are usually frequent. The latest news regarding Pidgin can be found on the news page.

xchat-gnome is a new frontend to the popular X-Chat IRC client which is designed with the user interface foremost in mind. Historically, the OSS desktop has been steadily improving in usability, accessibility, and general slickness, yet the world of IRC clients has not kept up. With IRC being one of the fundamental methods of communication within the open source community, it is bizzare that this area has been neglected.

GNOME's philosophy in terms of user interfaces has been progressing towards presenting the user with few options, yet sane defaults. While many of the normal X-Chat options will be preserved inside GConf, only the most common settings will be included in the main user interface. The GTK+ frontend provides excessive customizability, with options scattered throughout the interface. This leads to an inconsistent user experience, confusion, and general clutter.

One thing to note is that this project is still extremely young. As such, at the moment is is not extremely trivial to build, run or debug. If anyone is interested in helping out, drop me a line at the email address below or visit #xchat-gnome on irc.freenode.net