[TEAM] Drop XChat for 14.10

Thu Jul 31 21:46:56 UTC 2014

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(Message snipped for easier reading.)

On Wed, 30 Jul 2014, Micah Gersten wrote:

> On 07/29/2014 07:10 AM, Simon Steinbeiß wrote:
>> In short, what we're voting on is whether to drop XChat for Xubuntu
>> 14.10.
>>
>> == Rationale ==
>>
>> Those who need IRC can still use pidgin and this is a consistent move
>> in terms of streamlining our default applications (remember the
>> dropping of GThumb in 14.04).
>> This decision would be revisited for 15.04, so if we'd see the need, we
>> could re-add XChat (or hexchat).
>>
>> == Voting ==
>>
>> Just reply with +1, 0 or -1 to this thread – you can obviously also
>> explain why you voted one or the other way. So far, we have 4 votes
>> from team members for the proposal to drop XChat and 0 against (and 0
>> abstained).
>>
>> Please note that ONLY XUBUNTU TEAM MEMBERS CAN VOTE. Other votes are
>> ignored, so please don't send a vote and waste bandwidth unless you are
>> an active member of the Xubuntu team [1].
>>
>> [0]
>> http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/xubuntu-devel/2014/xubuntu-devel.2014-07-29-10.30.log.txt
>> [1] https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-team/+members#active
>>
> -1  I used to use Pidgin's IRC support when I used the other chat
> protocols supported in Pidgin.  When XChat was to be added, IIRC, I
> originally pushed that we could just use Pidgin for IRC.  However, I
> eventually switched to XChat as Pidgin's support for 20+ channels per
> server was lacking.  I've been using XChat for a while now and it seems
> a very simple to use tool to access freenode amongst other servers.  I
> agree with others that have stated in this thread that since IRC is such
> an integral part of the Ubuntu community, we'd be best served to keep an
> easy to use client like XChat.  If there is a simpler client that can be
> integrated, I'd be open to that.

- -1

I'd like to add on to what Micah said.  Pidgin (and some commonly used plugins) 
have pretty bad bugs in them, from as little as leaking your channel and PM list 
(IRC More plugin: https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/14635) to as bad as 
endlessly reconnecting (Core: https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/11089 + many 
duplicates).

This second bug can be caused by joining as few as 8 channel or less depending 
on how many IRC "buddies" you have.  It will then disconnect and reconnect to 
the IRC server spamming every channel you're in with join/quit messages, which 
tend to lead to a ban on the user.

Pidgin can more or less do IRC, but it has many bugs and quirks in how it 
handles IRC.