the end of freenode

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Style Pass
2021-06-14 07:00:09

My first experience with IRC was in 1999.  I was in middle school, and a friend of mine ordered a Slackware CD from Walnut Creek CDROM.  This was Slackware 3.4, and contained the GNOME 1.x desktop environment on the disc, which came with the BitchX IRC client.

At first, I didn’t really know what BitchX was, I just thought it was a cool program that displayed random ascii art, and then tried to connect to various servers.  After a while, I found out that an IRC client allowed you to connect to an IRC network, and get help with Slackware.

At that time, freenode didn’t exist.  The Slackware IRC channel was on DALnet, and I started using DALnet to learn more about Slackware.  Like most IRC newbies, it didn’t go so well: I got banned from #slackware in like 5 minutes or something.  I pleaded for forgiveness, in the way redolent of a middle schooler.  And eventually, I got unbanned and stuck around for a while.  That was my first experience with IRC.

After a few months, I got bored of running Linux and reinstalled Windows 98 on my computer, because I wanted to play games that only worked on Windows, and so, largely, my interest in IRC waned.

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