When comparing HydraIRC vs Konversation, the Slant community recommends HydraIRC for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Windows?” HydraIRC is ranked 13th while Konversation is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose HydraIRC is:
Source code available [here](http://svn.hydrairc.com/hydrairc/).
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
Source code available here.
Pro Functionality can be extended via plugins
Pro Good identity manager
Pro Feature rich
Pro Regularly maintained
Konversation is still being updated with new features and bug fixes. Konversation 1.5(released January 15, 2014) has added plenty of major features.
Pro Notifications
Konversation has an OSD(On Screen Display) feature that gives you an overlay message anytime your nick is mentioned. This means you won't be interrupted from your work and reduces the need to keep the window open.
Pro Plenty of useful smaller features
Koversation is full of features to make IRC simpler and smoother. It comes with tools like a channel bookmarker, the ability to insert special characters easily and the "URL catcher", which gives quick access to any links mentioned in the channel.
Pro Quick Buttons
The Quick Buttons features allows you to set a button to any IRC command that you frequently use. It has several defaults such as whois, and kick but a button can be created for any command you need.
Pro Very professional UI design
Cons
Con Development stopped
Latest version of HydraIRC was released in 2008.
Con No scripting support
Con Updating to a new version overwrites configuration settings
Colors, fonts and autojoin behaviors may be customizable, but backing up the settings prior to updating the software is imperative.