Internet Relay Chat (IRC) has been around far longer than most IM systems, and is still widely used. It is mainly designed for group (many-to-many) communication in discussion forums called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication.

The #kde channel is under Freenode, the IRC server, which provides an interactive environment for coordination and support of peer-directed projects, including -- and placing particular stress upon -- those relating to free software and open source projects, such as KDE.

While Kopete has a IRC plugin, and handles both channels and nicks well, long time IRC users might prefer a client designed just for that role, which is what Konversation is. It supports features such as granting and taking op status, banning, easy nick changing, special channel support for passwords and invites, and other things that the power IRC users expect. It also is far better at handling large channels such as #debian. If you have used another power-IRC client before, you should have no trouble using Konversation.