I need to get help for some problems with Linux, and the best way to do that is to go to the specific IRC channel for that. It's called linuxmint-help. But I have problems using IRC. I'll attempt to describe them.

This isn't a Linux Mint issue. It's either an IRC issue or a software issue or a general computer issue.

There's a link on the Linux Mint website that takes you to linuxmint-help. I think the client is called HexChat. That IRC interface doesn't work properly for me. I can't always scroll with it. When I attempt to scroll up to see what somebody said, all the text MOVES, or it gets blocked out by other text covering it. While I'm trying to read things, it moves and other text blocks out what I'm reading. So I try to find the sentence I was reading, but it's gone. I go to the side to scroll to try and get back to where I was reading, but it doesn't work. After some difficulty, after I've managed to read something, I scroll back down to where NEW text has been entered, but it doesn't always scroll down, and other text covers over the new text. Not sure if this makes sense. The point is, it's nearly impossible to read or use. I spend more time fighting with it than dealing with the problem I went there to get help with.

I FOUND an alternative IRC interface called mibbit. Mibbit works fine on the Windows 10 computer I'm on now. I got into the channel and was able to use it. The text didn't go haywire. No scrolling problems. It worked the way it's supposed to.

But that's still no good because I need to use it on the computer which I'm having problems with, so I can cut and paste text out of cmd and TERMINAL to show them, so they can help me with it. There's too much text to write down and retype into this computer and you make spacing mistakes when you do that anyway. That computer uses Windows Vista and Linux Mint. But when I go to mibbit on that PC, it doesn't work. It keeps saying it's loading or something. After half an hour I gave up waiting. I did that in INTERNET Explorer. Then I tried it in Google Chrome. It allowed me to login to the channel in Google Chrome. But when I got the channel, it was empty except for me, which makes no sense. So I looked for another way to access IRC. Found one called Irc2go. It doesn't work. The screen is blank except for a link at the top that says 'smileys'. So I looked for another IRC client. Found KiwiIRC. It's blank. Doesn't work. Found another one, was able to log in, but the chat room was empty, just like the mibbit accessed through Google Chrome. It's the exact same chat room which says, on the Windows 10 PC, it's populated with 219 users right now. On the other computer, it said "1 user" which was probably me. I entered the chat room, said hello, nobody was there. Waited for an hour, no response. The room was still empty. But it's the same chat room that's full on this computer. I'm not imagining things and I wasn't in the wrong chat room. How can this be possible?

Tried several other IRC clients with no success after that.

So on that PC, mibbit doesn't work, HexChat doesn't work properly, and no other IRC clients work either.You can cut and paste between two computers quickly.

Some Linux chat rooms do not require you to use IRC for a simple chat.