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.

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.

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

Here is a list of more recent clients and libraries:

https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini

(good stuff… there is even a FUSE file system for the Gemini protocol.)

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.

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:

• Value your privacy and are opposed to the web’s ubiquitous tracking of users Value your attention and your time and want to read with deep focus, free from distractions
• Are sick and tired of nagging newsletter subscription pop-ups, obnoxious adverts, autoplaying videos that chase you as you scroll and other misfeatures of the modern web
• Live somewhere with slow internet, can’t afford fast internet, or live off-grid and need to conserve precious battery power and minimise expensive satellite data use
• Are a hobbyist programmer with a “do it yourself” attitude who enjoys building their own tools and getting real use out of them every day

If multiple points above apply to you and you’ve been finding the web an increasingly unpleasant place for several years, Gemini might feel like a real breath of fresh air, even an oasis - but it’s not necessarily for everybody. In order to make sure that Gemini remains a simple, lightweight technology which respects its users’ privacy and autonomy not just now but into the future, the feature set has been deliberately kept quite minimal. It’s definitely not too minimal to be useful, but it certainly can’t do everything you might be used to, and maybe it’s missing something that’s a deal-breaker for you. Keep an open mind, give it a try, and see how you feel. Plenty of people have been surprised at how quickly they stop missing things they thought they couldn’t live without!

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.)

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.

I , also, like being able to use my favorite programming language for my config. (and pretty much everywhere).

Scheme, especially Guile, is like Clojure a joy of elegance and simplicity to use in one.

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).

“pro” tip: Whenever Ubuntu gives you a black screen it’s likely the GPU driver or desktop-environment which were borked.

This. Most important thing: Check hardware compatibility. If you don’t have extra time for tinkering, get a graphics card that works reliably.

The other thing is that desktop environments can break with changes, though this happens rarely. The more stuff changes, the more fringe yor distribution is, and the less well it is tested, the larger is the risk for breakage.