Getting is planning to ‘sunset’ IRC as an official support method, and some long-time users aren’t happy.
The recently Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS release announcement didn’t include a link to the Ubuntu Support IRC channel under its “if you have a question” section – though, from looking, the last announcement to list IRC was the one for Ubuntu 24.10).
That led to questions on if the Ubuntu support IRC channel is still an official community support option (the Help app in Ubuntu 26.04 still has links to pages which mention IRC).
Aaron Rainbolt, an Ubuntu Community Council member, said the omission was likely “accidental” in a reply posted to a followup discussion on Ubuntu’s Discourse, titled “Keep IRC as an official support method for Ubuntu”.
But he said the plan is to “sunset IRC as an official Ubuntu communications platform” in due course. That apparently hasn’t happened yet, but it’s coming – not that it the news will hold any front-pages1.
Canonical’s been modernising its infrastructure of late, e.g., axing Bazaar code hosting, retiring Ubuntu Pastebin. Its gaze will turn to the servers it keeps online to deliver legacy integrations on IRC, like the irclogs.ubuntu.com archive2 and various interactive channel bots.
Useful in 2006 through 2016, but is it worth keeping that stuff going in 2026?
Ubuntu’s development team moved its own discussions to Matrix in March 2025. While IRC bridges have been attempted the aim, per Rainbolt, is for everyone to be on platforms “the community as a whole monitors, maintains, and works on”.
It won’t mean the end of the #ubuntu-* channels on IRC. They won’t drop offline and will still be there, free for anyone to join, lurk in and chat if they want to – logging scripts and bots aren’t integral to the basic task of chatting, after all.
And IRC itself – Freenode drama aside – remains resilient, even in the face of modern alternatives.
Ubuntu may no longer point users to its old IRC channels to ask questions or seek help, but, no doubt, there’ll still be humans (or meat proxies) to ask questions of.
Some ardent IRCites aren’t convinced Matrix is a perfect replacement, pointing out low activity in the support room and the more-involved account setup process. But, then, asking fellow humans for help isn’t most people’s first port of call since the arrival of AI chatbots.
No date has been set for any user-facing shift – in so far as there will be one to notice – so for now, if you lurk on the Ubuntu Support (or other) Ubuntu IRC channels: keep calm and don’t /quit.
- More that people might surprised they hadn’t been ‘sunset’ already. ↩︎
- The archives were extra important for transparency, vote history, decision making etc., when Ubuntu governance meetings were held there. Meetings now happen on Matrix via Jitsi. Canonical engineers also use their own internal chat platform for communication. ↩︎
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