Mailing the story:
Overview of Three Chat Clients for KDE: Quassel, KVirc and Konversation
Internet Relay Chat has a history of over 25 years and it is still a widely used text-based protocol for chatting. In the Linux world, each distribution and major project has a chatting room, usually on Freenode, and here you can get online help, participate in collaborative projects, or just have a look at the latest discussions regarding the development of some project or application.