I used to use the IRC bouncer at bnc.kde.org to keep a constant presence for my IRC nickname, but an IRC bouncer has several limitations that always annoyed me. Then I discovered that Matrix has a built-in IRC bridge, and I’ve been using it ever since, shutting down my IRC bouncer account. Basically you use the Matrix protocol as IRC bouncer and you use any Matrix client as if it were an IRC client.

You can find everything you need to know here: https://community.kde.org/Matrix

You may be interested in Matrix if:

  • You use an IRC bouncer but you’d like something simpler to set up and with more features.
  • You’d like to use an IRC bouncer but you never did because it was too difficult to set up one.
  • You use the IrcsomeBot Telegram bot but you’d like a “native” bridge with IRC (for example, let people actually /query you!).