Leastsquares IRC channel

#leastsquares is an IRC channel located on the OFTC IRC network. You can connect to the network at irc.oftc.net. The name is a reference to Extraordinary Least Squares — a highly exclusive living, working, and recreation center between Seattle's Montlake and Capitol Hill neighborhoods.

What is IRC?

IRC is like a chat system based around public channels but with the ability to do IM-like personal messages as well. It's nearly as old at the Internet and often feels like that!

To connect to IRC, you'll need an IRC client. Some IM clients like Pidgin support many different protocol have support for IRC as well. If you already use one of these clients, you might trying setting IRC this way. That said, most people tend to choose to use dedicated IRC clients. The most popular free software client is probably Xchat and it should be easily available in almost any major GNU/Linux distribution.

General advice on setting up IRC can be found from this page which includes instructions on setting up IRC on GNU/Linux, Windows, and Mac.

The key pieces of information you'll need to configure any client are:

• Server/Host: irc.oftc.net
• Channel: #leastsquares

Introduce yourself when you join so folks know who you are! If you explain you are new to IRC, others will more than happy to help answer any questions you have.