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Add to SafariWhen comparing Quassel vs Textual, the Slant community recommends Textual for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Mac?” Textual is ranked 2nd while Quassel is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Textual is:
Textual was developed just for Mac, so there's no need to worry about compatibility issues. It can be downloaded straight from the App Store and takes full advantage of Macs native features such as the Notification Center.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
Quassal is available for free with source code licensed under GPL and available here.
Pro Distributed
It's possible for a front-end client or multiple front-end clients to connect to a single core client. This allows setting up an always on-line core that can be accessed from anywhere.
Pro Easy installation on Ubuntu due to the existence of PPA's
Right now Quassel has a PPA maintainer, which allows you to install the stable version or daily versions.
Support for PostgreSQL as database backend and easy to configure for people that know a bit about systems.
Pro Native to Mac
Textual was developed just for Mac, so there's no need to worry about compatibility issues. It can be downloaded straight from the App Store and takes full advantage of Macs native features such as the Notification Center.
Pro Designed with simplicity in mind
Textual was built to be simple and easy to use. It is very clean and has features for both IRC newbies and power-users.
Pro Full-featured
Textual provides a wide range of features for any level of IRC user. It has basic options such as:
- Native Fullscreen support
- Native Notification Center support
- Wide range of keyboard shortcuts
And plenty of other basic features you would expect from a quality IRC client. It also has a plethora of advanced features for those looking to get under the hood:
- SOCK4 and SOCK5 support
- Full, native support for IPv6 users.
- Direct Client-to-Client (DCC) file transfer support
And many other customization options, such as theming.
Pro Regularly maintained and updated
The team at textual is always working on updating and getting rid of bugs in Textual which means its always improving.
Pro Can be used for free if you build it yourself
Textual is open source and includes instructions for building it. You can set the TEXTUAL_BUILT_WITH_LICENSE_MANAGER flag to 0 to skip trial/license popups.
Pro Open source
Source code is available here.
Pro Proxy support
Textual can proxy your connection to IRC servers through SOCKS4 / SOCKS5 on a per-server basis.
Pro Full, native support for IPv6
Pro ZNC integration
Support for ZNC out of the box, including history.
Cons
Con Potential memory bloat in monolithic client if left running for a period of time
(I don't know if this problem has been fixed in recent years, but I have doubts)
Con No DCC support
DCC or Direct Client-to-Client protocol allows for private communications between users (without the traffic being routed through servers). Neither chat nor file transfers are supported.
Con No DCC chat support
Con Requires payment (unless compiled from source)
Textual is a paid product, but can be used for free if you compile it yourself.
Con Unreliable when having network issues
If you are using VPNs, your connectivity with the IRC servers may drop and you will find it almost useless. It is able to reconnect, but is not able to rejoin the channels when it reconnects.
