Here another article on this: http://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/gemini.html (written in 2020)

And later https://preshing.com/ on threading and concurrency.

From the article:

“What is the point of text-only webpages?” you may ask, especially if you are under 30. Gemini will probably not appeal to those who use the Internet primarily for entertainment, rather than as a source of information. But many, including myself, have lamented the demise of the 1990’s Internet. We want an Internet with webpages that do not take an average 10 seconds or more to download–despite having very little user-readable content, let alone content we may actually want to read. We yearn to return to the days when we could actually find noncommercial websites with an Internet search engine. Remember the days before about 2007 when a Google search could yield millions of search results, and Google would let you access as many as you wanted? Now, we get only a few pages of results that Google thinks are worthwhile. Though I have no proof, I suspect these may be mostly websites that have paid Google for the privilege of appearing in its search results. Go ahead and call me pessimistic. Perhaps I am.

One huge advantage that I forget to mention: Since Gemini does not use “addictive by design” UI elements popularized by social media companies, like feeds, timelines, likes and upvotes, colourful and distracting elements, endless scrolling, and comments that invite trolling, it feels a lot calmer.

If you want to have a glimpse how an Internet without addictive design could look, an internet made for and made by people, have a look at https://geminiprotocol.net/ . It is radical, indeed - but sometimes, it is better to bite the bullet, and follow the maxim “it’s better to get unpleasant things over and done with”.

And one main difficulty with using the Gemini network is… well, it is not addictive. It rather needs a little discipline to use it and harvest the fruits of it. Just like reading a good book, or writing a real letter to a friend.

“OpenSlopware” was a repository on the European Codeberg git forge containing a list of free software and open source projects which use LLM-bot generated code, or integrate LLMs, or which show signs of “coding assistants” being used on the codebase, such as pull requests created or modified by automated coding tools.

However, its creator – who we are intentionally not naming or tagging here – received so much harassment from LLM boosters that they removed the repository, and indeed their Bluesky account, stating that they would withdraw from social media for a while. Now, if you try to visit the original URL, you will receive only a 404 message.

• Algorithmic Feeds Tuned for Addiction: Behind the scenes, sophisticated AI algorithms curate each user’s feed to hold attention as long as possible. Rather than showing content chronologically, platforms personalize the feed using machine learning to maximize engagement — learning what hooks each person. This design is deliberate: “AI-driven social media algorithms are designed solely to capture our attention for profit… continuously tailoring feeds to individual preferences,” thereby maximizing screen time and deepening activation of the brain’s reward centers. By endlessly serving up auto-play videos or recommended posts that align with a user’s interests (or trigger emotion), the platform keeps the user in a continuous loop. Internal industry documents frankly admit these “continuous feeds… keep users on their platforms for as long as possible” to boost ad revenue. In essence, the newsfeed itself is engineered not as a neutral product, but as an addictive “scrolling feed that distracts users” and constantly resets our attention for the next reward

One huge advantage that I forget to mention: Since Gemini does not use “addictive by design” UI elements popularized by social media companies, like feeds, timelines, likes and upvotes, colourful and distracting elements, endless scrolling, and comments that invite trolling, it feels a lot calmer.

And for Arch / Desktop systems, also look here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_applications/Internet

Ctrl-f “gemini”

There are just too many things named Gemini

Here is a mnemonic for that: The port number of the open source Gemini protocol is 1965, which is the year of the first crewed flight of NASAs project Gemini, the first humans in space.

See section 2.2 of the FAQ

https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq-section-2.gmi

Thete are aggregators. For example

gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/

or gemini://rawtext.club/~sloum/spacewalk.gmi

gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/

or comnunity interest sites, like

gemini://tilde.green/ ,

which is in turn a site of

gemini://tildeverse.org

https://gemini.tildeverse.org/

Then there are systematic directories, like

gemini://medusae.space/

and search engines like

gemini://geminispace.info/

see section 2.2.3 of the above FAQ.

That might be the right thing if the bath water is toxic.

And after that, one only has to configure a folder for the gemini page files, and configure the home router to allow access to that port of the Raspberry Pi.

The alternative is to get a shell account to a shared gemini server like tildeverse. This is usually free of cost since the software is almost maintenance-free and the power draw is a few Euros per year for the entire server.

Another advantage: The active Gemini user community might be small (it is maybe five thousand or ten thousand people). But compared to personal pages on Facebook or Microblog on Ex-Twitter, or Reddit or LinkedIn it has pretty high-quality content from people who like to write in long form, and also like to read. If you write there, the response / resonance will be more like what blogs or LiveJournal was around 2005. A part of this is that many people write in a personal, candid and thoughtful way. Like that Israeli evironmental engineer who wrote how much he hated to be conscripted for military service. And writing is also self-reflection. Like having a rare view into other peoples mind. ou do not find that on facebook.

Writing a page means editing a file with a simple syntax like markdown (called gemtext).

Running a gemini server is about as difficult as running a file sharing client.

There are pre-built server packages as part of Debian and its derivatives.

Or, one can install Rust and download and build the agate server. That’s what I did on my Raspberry Pi B. That Raspberry has an Ethernet port and USB port which can power it from my FritzBox. Needs half a Watt of Power when idle. Then, one needs to start the server on bootup. This is done via a service file for systemd.

minimum required to deliver the message and nothing more

Wait, that’s not fair! How will Google make money from that!?

One problem is that with this monopolization of the web, browser vendors like Google can yank the standard in any direction they like (for example for more tracking and more ads, or surveillance). And you can’t make another browser because the protocol and features are needlessly way too complex, so it is legally an open standard but practically not. In the end, everyone will have to use Googles browser and suffer the included tracking.

A work of Aaron Swartz, if I remember correctly. Don’t forget him.

Wow, very nice! Runs well under SailfishOS !

Ah, and one little useful tidbit for Emacs users:

Emacs has a builtin client of course. It also dislays images.

Just

guix install emacs-elpher

then restart Emacs and

M-x elpher