Connect with the GNOME Community on IRC

IRC is the historical communication channel used by the GNOME community to chat, but is no longer the recommended platform to join our community. It remains possible to use IRC to connect with the GNOME community for legacy reasons. The recommended way to connect with the GNOME community is to use Matrix.

$/!\$ Please note that the IRC channels have transitioned from GIMPNet to Libera.Chat, which is a larger IRC network, so all channels have now been renamed #gnome-*. The documentation below is in the process of being updated.

Follow the steps below to get started chatting with parts of the GNOME community via IRC.

Step 1: Choose a messaging Application

To use IRC you need a client, or application. You can use the GNOME app Polari.

Get Polari

Step 2: Register on IRC to prevent kicks

Flood is a real problem on IRC, and to protect from it the IRC moderators sometimes prevent anyone who is not registered from joining a channel. The only way to work around that is to register against the IRC server.

Registering against IRC

Type

/msg NickServ REGISTER yourpassword you@mail.org

Confirming your email

You will receive an email with a confirmation code. To confirm your account, type

/msg NickServ CONFIRM the_code_you_received

Step 3: Join a Channel

You need to connect to irc.libera.chat server, also known as Libera.Chat.

One good channel to start with with is #gnome (irc) for general help and talking about GNOME.

While using Polari or any other IRC client, do -

/join #gnome

Join #gnome

Here are other channels you may be interested in joining -- feel free to join as many as you'd like, or start new ones and add them here so others can join:

Community & Core Experience

#i18n (Matrix or irc) - the channel for the GNOME Translation Project
#bugs (Matrix or irc) - the channel used by the GNOME Bugsquad
#docs (Matrix or irc) - for the GNOME Documentation Project
#engagement (Matrix or irc) - used by the GNOME Engagement Team
#foundation (Matrix or irc) - the channel used by the GNOME Foundation
#gnome (Matrix or irc) - the channel for general help and talking about GNOME
#gnome-design (Matrix or irc) - the channel used by the GNOME Design Team
#gnome-hackers (Matrix or irc) - general GNOME Development talk
#gnome-os (Matrix or irc) - discussion about GNOME as an Operating System
#gnome-shell (Matrix or irc) - the channel to discuss running, developing, or designing for the GNOME-Shell
#extensions (Matrix or irc) - the channel to discuss developing, debugging and supporting extensions Extensions Rebooted
#gnome-women (Matrix or irc) - the channel used by GNOME Women
#guadec (Matrix or irc) - a channel for the GNOME Users And Developers European Conference
#newcomers (Matrix (not available on IRC) - the channel for getting started with contributing to GNOME
#release-team (Matrix or irc) - the Gnome Release Team channel
#soc (Matrix or irc) - the channel for Google Summer of Code applicants and participants
#travel (Matrix or irc) - the channel for contacting the Travel Committee with any questions about the GNOME travel policy or help with your sponsorship requests.

Software Specific Channels

#abiword (Matrix or irc) - channel for AbiWord
#gnome-builder (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Builder channel
#boxes (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Boxes channel
#gnome-calendar (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Calendar channel
#c++ (https://matrix.to/#/#c++:gnome.org or irc) - GNOME Developers C++ bindings channel
#cheese (Matrix or irc) - Cheese channel
#gnome-clocks (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Clocks channel
#contacts (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Contacts and libfolks channel
#documents (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Documents channel
#empathy (Matrix or irc) - channel for the Empathy messenging program
#evince (Matrix or irc) - channel for the Evince document viewer
#epiphany (Matrix or irc) - channel for the Epiphany Web browser
#evolution (Matrix or irc) - channel for Evolution
#gnome-games (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Games channel
#gdm (Matrix or irc) - channel for GNOME Display Manager (gdm)
#geary (Matrix or irc) - channel for Geary, the simple mail client
#gedit (Matrix or irc) - Gedit channel
#gimp (Matrix or irc)- channel for GIMP
#gitg (Matrix or irc) - channel for gitg
#glade (Matrix or irc)- channel for the Glade user interface designer
#gtk (Matrix or irc) - GTK+ toolkit and GLib channel
#introspection (Matrix or irc) - GObject Introspection channel
#keyring (Matrix or irc) - Gnome Keyring channel
#photos (Matrix or irc) - channel for GNOME Photos
#polari (Matrix or irc) - Polari channel
#gnome-maps (Matrix or irc) - channel for GNOME Maps
#gnome-music (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Music channel
#nautilus (Matrix or irc) - channel for the default GNOME file browser - Nautilus
#python (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Developers Python bindings channel
#rust (Matrix (not available on IRC) - GNOME Developers Rust bindings and applications channel
#seahorse (Matrix or irc) - Seahorse (Passwords & Keys) channel
#shotwell (Matrix or irc) - Shotwell photo manager channel
#vala (Matrix or irc) - channel for Vala
#totem (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Videos channel
#vte (Matrix or irc) - Terminal channel

Servers & Web

#sysadmin (Matrix or irc) - GNOME sysadmin's channel (most users wont need to go here)
#webhackers (Matrix or irc) - GNOME webhackers channel

Regional Groups

#gnome-asia (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Asia channel
#gnome-br (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Brasil - Brazilian channel
#gnomefr (Matrix or irc) - French - GnomeFR (http://www.gnomefr.org)
#gnome-de (Matrix or irc) - German users and hackers
#gnome-hispano (Matrix or irc)- Canal de GNOME en lengua castellan - GNOME Hispano (http://www.es.gnome.org/)
#gnome-it (Matrix or irc) - Italian users and hackers
#gnome-india (Matrix or irc) - Users, Contributors and GNOME lovers from India
#gnome-nl (Matrix or irc) - GNOME Nederlands (http://nl.gnome.org/)
irc://irc.ozinger.org/gnome - Korean users and hackers (http://www.gnome.or.kr)

Others

ircs://irc.oftc.net/debian-gnome - Official Debian GNOME channel

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