On Wed, Sep 4, 2019 at 5:32 PM Tejas Sanap <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 04, 2019 at 03:33:49PM +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 4, 2019, 15:08 Vishal Rao <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > IRC is kind of "stateless", right? Meaning you have to stay logged in to > > > not miss any messages? If I log out and log back in later on, I miss all > > > the messages that were posted in the interim? That is the main reason I > > > stopped using IRC and prefer email mailing lists or online forum > > > discussion > > > platforms or things like Slack where you can see the messages even if you > > > log out and log back in later on. > Or, you can use a terminal-based IRC client like irssi or weechat and log in > on a server using tmux. Next time, tmux attach and tmux detach. Simple. > You never have to log out. > > > There's IRC bouncers which can be configured to enable the kind of > > "presence" which you point out. Those are usually additional services - > > either to be paid for, or, configured. Email continues to be a resilient > The main takeaway from the whole IRC/ZNC vs. Slack coversation, or rather > any software solution on Linux vs. On Mac/Windows, is that in the latter > case things "just work". Whereas, in the former case, you require a bit > of tweaking and hacking. This is the point where things go sour for many > users. As enthusiasts, we love a new challenge and throw ourselves at > it. But, a normal user only wants to do his work. >
A significant number of things also "just work" on Linux. And as someone who has been using a Linux desktop for a while now, the improvements have been quite staggering if not totally amazing. That said, there are 2 aspects to the IRC/Slack conversation - (a) initial investment (b) value proposition. As a growing number of projects are switching over to Slack, the end-user/contributor/participant joining IRC might not find the desired value. And as the above choice is made keeping in mind "get online as quickly as one can", setting up a persistent instance, configuring tmux/screen, configuring a client etc are steps that need to be done. Matrix addresses some of that. > To be honest, I have given this topic a lot of thought, and the only way > to convince people to go with FOSS/Linux solutions, is to show them in > person how to do things. > > As an example, I would suggest setting up "polybar". It's a custom > status bar that many people use alongside their minimalistic window > managers (like i3 or dwm). If, one wished to approach this task on their > own, it is highly likely that they would give up. But, if someone has > access to an in-depth and at the same time, easy tutorial such as [1] > and [2]... It will be a different story. > > > Slack and others don't lend themselves well to highly threaded or, long > > form conversations. List software such as Mailman are also adding > > enhancements which cater to some of the requirements around ease of > > conversations. > There are a lot of interesting features in ZNC. For example, it will > automatically (and, temporarily) detach from an "inactive" channel. Or, > it allows for maintaining seperate buffers, channel-list for different > devices. But, such features, are rarely advertised. > I maybe wrong here, but, as a "Linux Users Group" we should be helping > such projects "bridge the gap" between normal users and themselves. The question though is what is the gap we would want to bridge. If I am not mistaken, a student would want to earn their stripes/credibility within a project so that they can show their contributions and expertise. To that effect, the easiest path to the outcome will always be the most traveled. > Like, I know so many college "CS/IT" courses where students use vi/vim > as their editors, but the students never leave the "INSERT" mode. I > mean, that's just sad. I'd position that the students should be made aware of Atom, Eclipse and even VSCode as a number of possible spaces they will work at (employment, further studies) are adopting these. _______________________________________________ plug-mail mailing list [email protected] http://list.plug.org.in/listinfo/plug-mail
