HexChat IRC Client Discontinued By Releasing v2.16.2

HexChat, the popular free open-source IRC chat client, discontinued!

HexChat is a IRC chat client forked from XChat. It’s a GTK app written in mostly C programming language. Features include customizable interface, Windows and Linux support, scripting support with Lua, Python, and Perl, multi-network with auto-connect, join, and identify, and more.

By announcing the 1.6.2 release today, the developer TingPing finally discontinued working on the project, after almost 12 years of development.

“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.“

Alternatives to HexChat

HexChat is pre-installed as default IRC client for Linux Mint for years. Since the app is discontinued, the Linux Mint team turns to develop a new chat room application.

It’s Jargonaut that uses IRC, but is NOT IRC client. It’s an independent XApp that works in most Linux desktops. According to the blog post, features will include:

“It will support pastebin/imgur via DND, uploading your system specifications, troubleshooting and many features which have nothing to do with IRC. Yet you won’t be able to join channels or perform common IRC commands.“

For other IRC clients, there are also Irssi (command-line client), Konversation for KDE, GNOME Polari, and many others available in this Flathub page.