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What upsets me about these projects is that they are never mentioned in fmhy.net
Out of curiosity, how do you find gemini sites to read? If there aren't forms I assume there isn't a search engine?
There actually are a couple of search engines available on Gemini. If you install the Lagrange Browser, for Gemini, there should be a few listed on the "getting started" page
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.
But that's not modern. Most websites need to recreate basic HTML functionality with a GB of javascript libraries. iow. cut that unnecessary out and internet will become a better experience while saving much storage, throughput, and dissipated energies at every substation.
I've used gemini before. It's pretty neat. Reminds me of old school internet
That's a very unfortunate name for the project, given Google's AI Gemini.
Yeah, I can for my life not think of a reason why Google named it like that.
(The Gemini protocol discussed here is from June 2019, the Google language model and chatbot initially called "Bard" from 2023.)
Funny enough I wasn't too sure what this was about either, figured it was about Google's AI or maybe it was a protocol for decentralized cryptocurrency blockchain tech. The Gemini cryptocurrency exchange has been around since 2014 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(cryptocurrency_exchange)).
There's just too many things named 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.
I've looked into Gemini before. It seems neat but it also seemed like a lot of the links and clients for it on the main info site were dead.
This reminds me of RSS, designed for reading and pared back to the minimum required to deliver the message and nothing more.
minimum required to deliver the message and nothing more
Wait, that's not fair! How will Google make money from that!?
RSS feeds, my beloved. The firefox extension Livemarks, restores Firefox's old RSS capabilities, and it's so great
What capabilities?
It used to be that you'd go to a website, and Firefox would have an RSS icon in the address bar, if one was available, that you could click, and it would let you copy the feed and put it in a separate rss reader, or you could subscribe in your browser, and save the feed as a bookmark.
This latter method was how I followed blogs, podcasts, and even Youtube channels, for years.
I'll just pop in here to add a link to my favorite Android Gemini browser: Rosy Crow
It's fully featured, even supporting tokens for authenticated sessions.
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 elpherSounds interesting, what is the benefit of this compared to HTTP though? You can still host text or basic html that way and it works on any web browser.
Gopher guarantees readers that there will never be anything other than text and media served on a site. They don't have to trust the publisher, the protocol enforces it.
what is the benefit of this compared to HTTP though?
For me, it's kind of the novelty of it. Gemini is separated from the mainstream internet, there's a mild barrier to entry, so it has a distinct culture and vibe to it
Mild is an understatement. It's likely beyond the ability of most people to set up. To the extent it's exclusionary.
It is much more lightweight and simpler: While you can, but typically won't write HTML directly with a text editor, you can and typicall would write gemtext markup manually like markdown.
You can run it on a small rasberry pi, using a server like agate, which automatically generates certificates, and if you fancy, you can write your own client browser in a weekend (that's why there are a lot of clients).
It is very deliberately designed to be minimalistic, to depart from the enshittified modern web flooded with ads, tracking, and slop.
And because of this, pages load instantly.
Myself, I have witnessed the birth of the World Wide Web, designed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, to share information, new ideas and knowledge, and run the first Mosaic browser in 1994, and gemini is very close to the hearth of this original idea.
All HTML and PHP I have written was with a text editor but fair point most people don't. I still would love to see more cool simple sites like bigclive.com
can work on any web browser
Gemini can have competition of browsers: it's feasible for one person to create a Gemini client completely, correctly and securely.
There are only ~2 web browsers left and making a new one at all is near impossible (forks with minor size changes are great n' all but not meaningful enough to stop Google basically being in control).
There is a lot of browsers that can show HTML websites though, not just 2. There are even new ones made like https://chawan.net/.
There are only ~2 web browsers left
And the only widely used browser not owned by big tech has about 2.2% market share now. And it is falling.
I think ladybird has been making good progress
See also point 1.1.2 in the FAQ:
1.1.2 The gentler answer for everybody else
Gemini is a group of technologies similar to the ones that lie behind your familiar web browser. Using Gemini, you can explore an online collection of written documents which can link to other written documents. The main difference is that Gemini approaches this task with a strong philosophy of "keep it simple" and "less is enough". This allows Gemini to simply sidestep, rather than try and probably fail to solve, many of the problems plaguing the modern web, which just seem to get worse and worse no matter how many browser add-ons or well meaning regulations get thrown at them.
Gemini might be of interest to you if you:
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.
It is a nice way to host a very lightweight blog or microblog. The ultra-light markup language gives it a feel like a wiki. Such blogs can be viewed with a client like deedum for Android or amfora for Linux, or with a brower using an gemini-to-web gateway: Here a gateway at mozz.us displaying a German paywall-less newspaper at gemini://taz.de.
And by the way, since gemini clients can also do local file:// URLs, it is also a minimum-fuss way to organize a local file tree that contains a mix of documentation / info and media like a wiki, and share it locally with people over NFS or Samba (Windows file sharing).
Also check out the tildeverse for a true internet experience. Its our little hideaway from bigtech. Where you can truly connect with people.