I prefer to always have channel list in the same order (alphabetical). You could argue that I can set preferred order in server properties for autojoin. However, if you use software like dircproxy and don't have anything in autojoin, the order is always random when you connect to your dircproxy. Also, if I have channel tabs on bottom, I can swap them with mouse pointer. But if I have them on the left, it's no longer possible (they are no longer "tabs", it's a tree view). Reproducible: Always
It's still possible to reorder the treeview with middle-mouse drag (technically that's also how one is supposed to do it with tabs in KDE; the left button mode is relatively recent - it's historically complicated). The order being random sounds like a dircproxy bug (it should replay JOINs in the order it got them). Still, this is in the works. It's also a dupe tho, so ... closed, sorry :). *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 133837 ***