Irssi

Irssi is a GPL-licensed text-mode/graphical IRC client written in the C programming language for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows (with Cygwin).

Notable Benefits

Irssi is written from scratch, unlike some other clients, which are based on the ancient ircII. It is therefore notable for its excellent security, customisable behaviour, and ease of modification. The latter is manifested in the various available modules and perl scripts; irssi's scripting is among the most powerful around.

Some purists prefer irssi simply because they consider its entire feel to be 'cleaner' than that of clients which implement things like fileservers, auto-rejoining the channel after being kicked out by, and automatically kicking and even banning users, by default. Some are pushed away from BitchX by its use of profanity in its name, kick messages, and quit messages.