In 1999, a group of young LINUX code 'hackers' began a channel on irc.chatjunkies.org called #nixhelp. The original goal was simple: Learn more about GNU/LINUX by helping others learn. #Nixhelp was a unique place for IRC users.
Our History:
1997, the 'dot com' bubble had simply busted and it left many newly initiated LINUX users to wonder if the technology boom had ended. The years of 1999 - 2001 weren't easy times and the tech community started to deal with the fallout from the previous years. People were losing jobs, outrageous fortunes were lost and black hat hacking was at it's heyday. This was the backdrop that led to the formation of irc.nixhelp.org.
MIRc, paid IRC client that ran only on Windows during those years, was king. However, in spring of 1999, XChat - a rival to MIRc, launched and it could easily be run on LINUX.
The IRC server world was in it's Wild West days. People began to pile onto the networks left and right - this led to what many called 'chat wars'. There was alot of bad blood in those times; disgruntled tech employees began to teach script kiddies how to exploit computer networks on many channels. #Nixhelp was a safe haven for people who simply wanted to learn LINUX, and they came from all over. However, what developed was an unbreakable circle of friendship that spanned nearly every networked country and a true web of trust.
Having left chatjunkies.org, the group formed the global IRC Open Source help network known as nixhelp.org. Back then, networking all of these global nixhelp sub domains under the control of one ircd was a huge task at a time when simply having your own domain was seen as being 'overly techy'. Zed, the creator of the infamous IRC application XChat, backed the group's play by listed the relatively unknown network in his list of known IRC networks that installed with each copy of XChat. XChat was crucial to NIXhelp's exposure to the world of LINUX - it was the best gui based IRC client in the Open Source community's arsenal. The initial IRC SSL port #6669 found in XChat's configuration settings was originally tested on irc.nixhelp.org.
From 2001 to 2014, NIXhelp served the Open Source community as a resource for those that needed help with learning LINUX/UNIX/BSD - the only requirement was that they needed to be savvy enough to use IRC. 2014 proved to be a troublesome year for NIXhelp and late in the fall of that very same year, the network closed. The original circle was broken.
The domain itself then fell into obscurity.
However, this isn't a story of loss, failure or defeat. Late in the fall of 2017, one of the original founders rescued the domain. Zed, Halo64, Phelix, Guru, dvNull, Hesiod, Sunshine, Law, BBB, Synic, Kalmairn, Jolie, Astryl, JonesE, kp^, Geekster, coreyc, [skitz], PseudoVamprye, dmadhatr, Nimrod and UpooPoo - this is for you
