Last week I bought an Asus EeePC 1000H laptop, especially for running my ICS 24/7. Yesterday I managed to install Ubuntu Linux on it, and get the ICS running.
This means that from now on my Internet Chess Server will in principle be on-line 24/7. It is a FICS-like server, but I hacked it to support a wider range of variants than other ICS do. In particular the board format is not limited to 8x8.

To see the list of supported variants when logged on to the server, type "boards". To see the sub-variants within a variant, type "boards VARIANTNAME", e.g. "boards capablanca", to get the list of sub-variants of capablanca, such as "bird", "carrera","embassy" etc. (Not all variants have sub-variants; sub-variants differ from each other only in the initial setup.) When you mention a variant without specifying a subvariant, it uses the default start position for that variant. So "capablanca" would mean the same as "capablanca capablanca". To make life easy, the ICS supports Gothic Chess as separate variant "gothic", although it could also be played as "capablanca gothic".

To use the ICS you need WinBoard as a client (although some variants would also work in a primitive way with ascii-based boards when you use telnet to connect). WinBoard can be obtained from:

http://www.open-aurec.com/wbforum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=50387

To login to the ICS with WinBoard, start it up from the Windows start menu as "WinBoard Startup Dialog", select "Use an Internet Chess Server", and type as server specification:

80.100.28.169 /icshelper=timeseal

When you then press "OK", you should get the welcome screen of my ICS, and you could login under a name of your choosing. (Please be a little more imaginative than merely typing "guest" )

(To login with telnet you would need to type at the command prompt: "telnet 80.100.28.169 5000", as the ICS is behind port 5000.)

If you are not used to playing on FICS, the following commands are helpful to start you off:
"help" gives you a list of existing commands.
"help COMMAND" gives you a description of the mentioned COMMAND.
"who" tells you who else is curently on the server
"games" gives you a list of games that are in progress
"match OPPONENT 5 0" challenges OPPONENT for a 5-min + 0-sec/move normal Chess game
"accept" starts a game against someone that is challenging you
"match OPP 12 2 gothic" challenges OPP for a 12-min + 2-sec/move Gothic-Chess game
"seek ..." will put you on a list of people that are looking for an opponent for a specific game (time control, variant)
"sought" will print the list of people that are looking for a specific game
"boards" prints a list of available variants
"observe GAMENR" or "observe PLAYER" makes you watch a game that is going on
"tell PLAYER MESSAGE" prints the MESSAGE on the mentiones PLAYER's screen
"say MESSAGE" prints the MESSAGE on your current or last opponent's screen

Commands and player names can usually be abbreviated as long as they are unique; e.g. "obs" is the same as "observe", "mast" would be the same as "MasterKiller".

Of course as with any starting ICS, the main problem will be that when you go there, there will be no opponent. So if you want to use it, you better bring an opponent with you. I will try to provide a few (weak) computer opponents that will always be there; one to play normal chess, 10x8 chess and knightmate, another one to play xiangqi.

Have fun!