I personally use libera.chat because it's the most active IRC server out there. is there any other active servers?
I found this website to search for different IRC servers https://netsplit.de/networks/
I don’t use much lately because I’m usually on mobile and I don’t like using IRC with an intermittent connection.
But libera.chat is the one I log on to when I do. I would be curious about servers and channels that offer something different: most are about technology.
Please consider taking a look at the lounge. It's a self hosted solution that you access thru the web. It's solved that problem for me since it is always running on the server. If you have a Raspberry Pi you can use that or a VPS.
IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It's basically like discord where you can talk to people online but it's very old. check out https://libera.chat if you haven't experienced IRC before it would be a good starting point :D
Discord also retains chat history. When you join a channel on IRC, you don't see any of the previous chat history.
The great thing about IRC is that it's not owned by a corporation. If you're interested in a modern open standard that has the same features as Discord, check out Matrix
Think of IRC as a spiritual parent to discord. The big advantage for discord comes from media - embedding images easily on the server, reaction, voice chat and screen sharing.
It does make one wonder what would have happened if IRC had implemented some of that functionality back in say the 90s/00s.
IRC is an open standard. No one owns it, so anyone can make a client. Discord, is locked down and proprietary. One of the benefits of this is that they can onboard users with a refined experience. IRC requires newcomers to do a bit of homework to choose an IRC client and choose a network/server.