Linkinus: IRC Made Easy

IRC is one of the most used, yet oldest forms of Internet chat. Because of this, it is also very simple. So, if IRC is so simple to use, why are the clients sometimes so difficult to figure out? Well, the word “simple” gets a whole new meaning with Linkinus.

Although Linkinus is extremely easy to use, it does not lack in features. In fact, it has many very advanced features. One of my favorite (albeit not a very advanced one) is styles. Styles are the way to customize your experience in Linkinus. They’re like Adium Xtras for IRC! You just choose a style (in Preferences>Styles), hit Apply and you’re off. And if the 12 styles that come pre-installed aren’t enough, you can even create your own style by downloading the style SDK! To download the SDK, just just click “Download Style SDK…” in that same window. Or, if you don’t know HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you can download styles made by others in the forums.

Another community-based feature of Linkinus are plug-ins. Plug-ins allow you to do things that weren’t originally built into Linkinus. With these, you can do things like display the currently playing song in iTunes or Last.fm information. These are also a lot like Adium Xtras. If you know objective-c, you can download the Linkinus plug-in SDK from here. But, if you don’t, there are also many plug-ins in the forums.

One of my favorite features of Linkinus is its flood protection. They come built-in to Linkinus in Preferences>Flood Protection. You just hit the checkbox “Enable Flood Protection”, and specify the protection you want. You can specify buffer size and correlation time. The lower the buffer size, the less vulnerable you are to excess flood, but you also hit a major performance wall if you set it too low. The higher the correlation time, the less vulnerable you are too excess flood, but again if you make it too high, your performance will go way down.

The second part of this tab is Channel Details. This just specifies if Linkinus will send out the WHO command based on how many people are in the room. The WHO command just gets information about a certain user, like name, ip, etc. If you don’t care about getting this information, then set the slide low. If you really want this feature, set the slider high, but remember, you may hit a performance wall.

Then of course, there is the actual IRC part of Linkinus. Linkinus makes it extremely easy to set up a new channel, or connection. For a new channel, you just hit Shift>Command>N (or New Channel in the popup of the [+] button). For a new connection within a channel, you just hit Command>N (or New Connection in the popup of the [+] button). If you know IRC commands, all of them work with Linkinus, because, well, it is an IRC client. Just because it’s easy to use, doesn’t mean you can’t use your fancy IRC commands.

Linkinus retails for $20, and you can find a 15-day trial at their site, too. $20 is a lot to ask for an IRC client, but its simple, yet advanced features almost make up for the $20 premium.

On another note, if you use Logitech Control Center for a mouse and keyboard, I suggest you do not try Linkinus, because Logitech Control Center and Linkinus do not work well together.