Hamza and others:
Sorry. I was typing for all questions and my own thoughts, so it got a little long.
In order to use the mini-chat, I have to register myself in the forums. This imho, is an unnecessary step and pointless. Most people who register don't always participate in the forums. They simply want to solve the problem they are facing and just use the distro. Using my own case, I have never registered in *any* of the ubuntu forums, but I have managed to solve all the problems by using the IRC channel and a temporary nickname.
If I compare the workflow between using the mini-chat and webIRC, webIRC wins hands down. Unlike the forum signup (which is needed for chatting), for freenode, there is no sign-up, email/account verification, and many workplaces ban the access of third party emails in workplace -- which people use for such forums.
In web IRC, I can use a throwaway name "phantom", "fixedman", etc... fill a captcha, use the channel name, and I am already in and talking!
http://webchat.freenode.net/ Beat that in terms of simplicity.
Regarding effort and security,
EFFORT: freenode handles the backbone of the operations, namely the channel servers and the nickname servers. All maintenance and software upgrades are done in that end. We simply embed the FOSS borowser plugin called "qwebIRC" which actually uses port 80 as per the documentation (
http://qwebirc.org/). Already we have an embedded chat, and this is just as embedded.
SECURITY: I don't know what your concerns are, but all channels that I participate in have FOSS channel bot/bots configured for security. If someone trolls, floods or tried to spam the channel, the bots automatically kick them out and ban them from re-entering. No effort from our side. I've seen this happen in ubuntu channel. A few warnings, then the bots botted them out!
Internet Relay Chat bot
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IRC/Bots
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-bots
Pick one, configure it for our channel, and that's it... forget about it:
Comparison of Internet Relay Chat bots
Now, we come to the actual usage:
1. In IRC, the moment I log in, I can see how many users are (not) logged in, and if I can type something in the first place. By contrast, the minichat is like pot-luck for me. On every occasion, I type a hello, and just hang around, hoping to get lucky. Honestly, the mini-chat on porteus feels like a big step backwards once you have used the web/IRC interactive help a few times.
2. In IRC, the chat log is so much more easy to follow, it is not as limited as our mini-chat (only 10 chat lines are displayed). It is easy to copy the log, it is easy on the eyes (plain text is always easy on the eye than funny HTML embedding).
3. Chat command history for IRC is much much longer. Runs to 1000s of lines instead of just 10 lines. It is so easy to keep a copy of the log, once your problem is solved, for future reference.
4. We can keep track of multiple conversations more easily in the IRC windows
5. Easy to hold team meetings and work collaboration (coding hackathlons) in a much better way. I attended one such meeting recently, and it was a very good experience... voting, internal dialogue, everything is just one switch: +m, +i, etc.
6. Believe it or not, IRC will foster more people to hang around, to chat with each other, to just stay and help anyone that drops in, etc. I have seen this in many channels: ubuntu, vim, emacs, crunchbang, fuduntu, linuxdistrocommunity, rescatux, etc. Some of these IRC channels even helped me in stting up FileZilla, rsync, etc.
Please don't take my word for it. I urge you to drop into one of these forums yourself and check out the turnaround time, and the rapid, multiple problem solving that takes place.
#porteus is not taken by anyone. I think thee previous guy that suggested IRC already created it on behalf of us.
Here's the original link:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... chat#p5024
If you or one of the mods got in touch with freenode admins, they'll simply transfer the ownership to you, as you have the clear name of the distro going for you. Even if you didn't get porteus, it's not the end of the world. We can register ourselves as #porteus-slax and move on.
Anyway, this is getting rather long. It's for you all to decide. I can help you with somethings if you want me to. I will summarise:
1. We got a great distro and a great community also. Moving to IRC streamlines us with the other mature distros that offer the IRC as a quick and easy support platform!
2. Switching to IRC is probably less effort than maintaining a large user database who have to register before using the chat for help. Remember, webIRC is anonymous, CAPTCHA quick, and BOT monitored.
3. Just like the mini chat is some embeddable PHP plugin, the qwebirc is a FOSS plugin. Fit it, forget it. For the advanced users, there's always Pidgin or Chatzilla.
4. All the server load for the chatting users is maintained by freenode, so it's all out of our hands, one less hassle, that is. They are FOSS too.
Personally, I believe that this move will align us with a lot of other popular distros.
P.S: I will probably edit this as and when needed.