IRC

ive tried setting up and IRC multiple times and just looking for some help. i had the xchat thing because of one of the basic challenges, but it was like a 30 day trial or something. looking for a couple good IRC's and also how to set one up i downloaded one before but when i looked up the channel and tried to connect it said i was the only user. also ive heard there are some evil people on IRC and i need to setup like a sock 4/5 proxy or something like that. if you are experienced please help it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance to all who can help!

Several IM clients support IRC, I tend to use Pidgin (for no real reason). What server(s) are you actually trying to join?

XChat 2 (Also known as YChat) is a free version of XChat.