Irssi

IRSSI is a client which allows you to connect to an internet relay chat (IRC) server via a command line environment.

Emerge
install :

To run the program, simply open up a terminal and type 'irssi', you can type 'irssi -h' to see all command line options.

Configuring irssi
The first time you run irssi a configuration file will be created for you in $HOME/.irssi/config.

This can be modified with the /set command while in the client by typing '/set option value', type '/set' by it self to see all available options & their current value. If you want your changes to stick over restarts, you will need to modify the configuration file for your irssi client.

Using irssi
/connect irc.freenode.net
 * to connect

/nick newuser
 * to set a user name

/j #gentoo
 * to join a channel

/exit
 * to exit