On HPR #2162 I mentioned that I'm connecting to freenode IRC using Riot and Matrix. Here I explain a bit of background to why, what Matrix is, and why you should use it too.

Quick-quick version

Just go to https://riot.im/app/#/room/#freenode_#oggcastplanet:matrix.org, click Join and you're on the channel! If you register a user there (or maybe on another instance, like @lambadalambda's https://matrix.heldscal.la/), you can then log in with the same username and password in the Android app and see all your joined channels there.

Correction to audio: Riot is on F-Droid. For some reason I couldn't find it at the time, even though it's clearly there, so I'm currently using the version from the Google Play Store. I hear that battery use may be an issue if you're independent from the evil GOOG.

Alternatives

Other ways of connecting to IRC over flaky or intermittent connections without losing context:

ZNC

In particular, check out this pretty elaborate ZNC-on-ZNC setup to solve the issue with having multiple devices that all want an independent scrollback buffer. I was just about considering setting up something like this when I discovered the Matrix bridge instead.

One colleague of mine uses Quassel and loves it.

Another colleague uses irssi ConnectBot or something similar and can't understand why anybody would want anything else.

Criticism

Matrix is a big fat NIH, why not just use XMPP? (short pump.io discussion)

Fodder for further HPR episodes

Man there are a lot of Slack alternatives out there. (pump.io post)