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#1 2026-02-23 02:54:16
- brocashelm
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- Registered: 2020-06-29
- Posts: 252
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HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
Saddened by the abandonment of HexChat by upstream? Say no more: ZoiteChat to the rescue.
It looks and feels the same as HexChat did, except it's ported from GTK2 to GTK3.
You can download the source code or get it for your platform (on GNU/Linux, AppImage and Flatpak binaries are the official builds) here.
Last edited by brocashelm (2026-02-23 05:22:11)
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#2 2026-02-23 03:14:37
- ralph.ronnquist
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- From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS
- Registered: 2016-11-30
- Posts: 1,695
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
Beware! That's still on github
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#3 2026-02-23 05:51:08
- EDX-0
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- From: Guatemala
- Registered: 2020-12-12
- Posts: 249
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
github is a popular forge, which is good for discovery and visibility of a project.
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#4 2026-02-23 06:06:21
- ralph.ronnquist
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- From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS
- Registered: 2016-11-30
- Posts: 1,695
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
github = Microsoft. Stay away!
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#5 2026-02-23 06:15:12
- EDX-0
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- From: Guatemala
- Registered: 2020-12-12
- Posts: 249
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
i have all my repos in github, been mirroring to gitlab, codeberg and more recently the devuan gitea instance, i'm not getting any repo off github cuz it does help visibility but i do have to update all my readme files with links to the mirrors.
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#6 2026-02-23 06:28:18
- ralph.ronnquist
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- From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS
- Registered: 2016-11-30
- Posts: 1,695
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
Everyone makes their own choice about what is important.
I jumped off github when I learnt they sold out to Microsoft.
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#7 2026-02-23 08:21:44
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
This does look exciting! Have grabbed the Appimage and sofar it is working well. Looks like my Hexchat custom theme config will work with this as well. Good find!
"Has cat, eats cheese, drinks coffee, Chaotic Neutral " 
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#8 2026-02-26 00:48:44
- greenjeans
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- Registered: 2017-04-07
- Posts: 1,675
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Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
Sweet! I do prefer Hexchat for IRC, was sad to hear it's no longer in the repo.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vuu-do/ Vuu-do GNU/Linux, Devuan-based Openbox systems.
Devuan 6 mate-mini iso, pure Devuan, 100% no-vuu-do, mostly 
Please donate to support Devuan and init freedom! https://devuan.org/os/donate
https://devuanusers.com/
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#9 2026-03-30 02:48:33
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
Hi all, I have been using Zoitechat since It was posted here. I upgraded from 2.17.4 to 2.18.0 pre5 about a week ago now and it is working very well, version 2.18.0 pre5 supports gtk3 theme switching. There is a bug with the spell check underlining which the dev knows about and is working on it.
I'm using the Appimage on Devuan, but also testing the Snap build as well. Of course I don't think Snaps will be much of an interest here.
"Has cat, eats cheese, drinks coffee, Chaotic Neutral "
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#11 2026-06-24 14:19:24
- greenjeans
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- Registered: 2017-04-07
- Posts: 1,675
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Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
Why Hexchat is abandoned?
No longer maintained: https://hexchat.github.io/news/2.16.2.html
ZoiteChat now in debian testing : https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1120756
Last edited by greenjeans (2026-06-24 14:21:19)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vuu-do/ Vuu-do GNU/Linux, Devuan-based Openbox systems.
Devuan 6 mate-mini iso, pure Devuan, 100% no-vuu-do, mostly
Please donate to support Devuan and init freedom! https://devuan.org/os/donate
https://devuanusers.com/
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#12 Yesterday 14:49:48
- WEBDEVDESTROYER2000
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- Registered: 2026-07-01
- Posts: 6
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
I built ZoiteChat from source.
Hi, I'm a beginner programmer who's into web development!
I'm learning PHP as my first programming language.
<?php
echo "I love PHP!"
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#13 Today 00:17:36
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
Thanks for the heads up!
ZoiteChat now in debian testing
Actually, it's better than that. It's already in backports too, so if you have backports enabled you can already apt install it on Excalibur today!
But I unfortunately must rate it's usage of GTK3 as somewhat broken (at least as of the last version Debian accepted)
- The menubar doesn't extend the full width of the window, resulting in a funny color change in themes like Devuan's default
- Menus somehow aren't being drawn the same as in normal applications like Mousepad either resulting (again on Devuan's default theme) in menus that lack outer borders and have overly-shaded separators.
~ Start theming my apps ~
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#14 Today 00:27:10
Re: HexChat's GTK3 Successor: ZoiteChat
Yikes! This thing apparently hard codes colors and doesn't even honor the dark mode of Adwaita-dark, which even the cultural vandals behind Stop Theming My App would respect. I sure hope the folks behind this consider it an unfinished work-in-progress and not something ready to be compared favorably with HexChat yet.
Creating an IRC client specifically for GTK3 is a great idea for one reason and one reason only, which is that a lot of GTK3 themes these days don't provide an equivalent GTK2 look. But if you aren't even going to work properly with the majority of GTK3 themes, what even is the point?
(Someone might say "Working when GTK2 is removed from Debian", but deliberately breaking GTK2 is silly and moreso now that gtk2-ng exists.)
Last edited by Uityyy (Today 00:31:13)
~ Start theming my apps ~
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