How to Install The Latest ‘WeeChat’ Chat Client in Ubuntu

weechat-icon

WeeChat is a fast, light and extensible chat client works on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Unix, BSD, and GNU Hurd.

While Ubuntu repositories only provide an old version, here’s how to install the latest WeeChat via its official repository in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 17.04, Ubuntu 17.10, and derivatives.

WeeChat Features:

  • lightweight core with optional plugins.
  • Full-featured IRC plugin
  • extensible with C, Python, Perl, Ruby, Lua, Tcl, Scheme and Javascript
  • fully documented and translated into several languages
  • an active project with a large community for scripts.
  • a free program released under the GPLv3 license

The latest stable release so far is WeeChat 1.9 which features:

  • improve speed of nicklist bar item callback
  • add auto scroll of buflist bar with new option buflist.look.auto_scroll
  • add option buflist.format.name
  • add variables ${format_name}, ${current_buffer} and ${merged}@@ in buflist
  • display a warning in buflist when the script buffers.pl is loaded
  • add server/channel pointers in trigger IRC callbacks
  • add API functions config_option_get_string and hdata_compare
  • fix bind of Space key
  • many bugs fixed.

How to Install WeeChat via its Official Repository in Ubuntu:

Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for “Terminal” from app launcher, when it opens, do following steps one by one:

1. Run command to add the WeeChat repository:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://weechat.org/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weechat.list'

For Linux Mint 18.x, replace $(lsb_release -cs) in the code with xenial. And type in your password when it asks and hit Enter.

weechat repository

2. Add the repository key via command:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 11E9DE8848F2B65222AA75B8D1820DB22A11534E

3. Finally upgrade WeeChat via Software Updater (Update Manager) if you have a previous release installed:

upgrade-weechat

Or run commands to check updates and install the latest WeeChat:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install weechat

For those who want to install the latest development release (2.0 so far), use weechat-devel instead in the command above.

Uninstall:

To remove weechat, simply run command in terminal:

sudo apt-get remove --autoremove weechat

And remove the official weechat repository via Software & Updates utility under Other Software tab.

About ml

ml is a part time stay-at-home dad who've been using Ubuntu Desktop for a few years. He writes in the free time and wishes to share some useful tips with Ubuntu beginners and lovers.