Link to an IRC webchat and your users will never know about IRC at all. It will feel like a webchat to them, so the scary goes away

XMPP MUC is the best because it has history catch-up / context and some other good features, but IRC is ok if you must.

Have most of my equiptment for my first YouTube channel. The book is shorter than expected

You're presupposing that neither project is using the stable versions provided by the OS, which is what the discussion is in context of.