The terms on the right to use user data in section 4.1 are also a bit surprising. I’d expect that from a social network like Facebook, but not from a text editor.

My feeling is that might be a lack of choice here. So, just my 0.00002 cents, to supply you with a few more options:

• Just use Debian. It is boring but it will work.
• Or, Tumleweed has been named. But it is not maximally stable. Better, use Tumbleweed in a VM on top of OpenSuSE leap. That way, you have both superb stability and a very current system.
• You could also sell your nvidia card (let’s be honest, it probavly will only bring you grief), and get a AMD radeon which is fully supported by a libre kernel. Then, you can install Guix on it. Then you have a truly reproducible, very lean and organized system.
• If dropping the nvidia card sounds too extreme for you, you can also install Debian, and install Guix as a package manager on top of it. That will work because the Debian kernel supports the hardware. But don’t forget that NVidia is a nuisance, often. Well, you might have luck.
• Let’s say you are short on money and you don’t want a system that consumes too much RAM, since that has gotten expensive, man. So, you could get Debian with XFce as Desktop environment. Or, even leaner, you could get ICeWM.
• Or in case you want a very fast Lisp-based window manager with very fast, manual tiling, try StumpWM, say, on Debian.
• Or, if you want an automatic tiling WM, give i3wm or sway a try. Or GNOME with paperWM extension.
• GNOME would also run on Ubuntu, or on Mint. Actually, it is all Debian under the hood, mostly. Just easier to install.
• Or you want a privacy-focused Distro. Try Trisquel.
• Or, you just want to keep it simple, perhaps. In that case, I’d recommend Debian. Or, perhaps for the start, Debian-derived distro that is easy to install. There are plenty.
• But when you want to have it even simpler, get rid of the nvidia card. This really simplifies things.

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 Genini 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 C. 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

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.)

Guix is much more and takes management of software dependencies to a new level.

Here is my recent summary of it:

https://feddit.org/post/23120439

see also, for a discussion in c/linux,

https://feddit.org/post/23151683

I like this one a lot which is linked there:

gemini://tilde.green

I think I found it – is this a HTTP/HTML Gateway to it:

https://gemini.tildeverse.org/

The Gemini URL would be

gemini://tildeverse.org

Do you have a link?

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.