The Web Is Broken Beyond Repair. The Alternative? GOPHER!

[@davidjackson7675]

Hey! Is you gopher site still up? I can't seem to reach it?

[@DistroTube]

Deleted the gopher server for a gemini server: gemini://distro.tube Check out my Gemini video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f6KUnJJ8eLyDjs0

[@encycl07pedia-]

​@@DistroTube Why did you have to delete the Gopher version? Do you know how many people serve both Gemini and Gopher? Seriously, that's a major click move to just erase something simple and easy because you found some protocol that all of 14 people actually can/want to use. How many of those 14 do you think actually want to use it to check your Gemini site? Gopher may be small but it's not infinitesmal like Gemini.

[@4clive]

If Gopher had 'won' as the www de facto then this video would have been titled, 'Gopher is Broken Beyond Repair, the Alternative? HTTP!'

[@taragnor]

So true.

[@erickwarteng2427]

yep

[@maxmustard7515]

seems to be a hypothetical assumption...and not necessarily true...

[@satibel]

@@maxmustard7515 given that most software follows the fish fits the bowl/pond philosophy, It would be highly likely.

[@RaminHonary]

It's because big companies took over the Web, which used to be small and minimalist, just like Gopher. The W3C consortium controls Web technology, and membership consists entirely of major corporations. If Gopher had won over HTTP back in the late 90s, eventually a Gopher Consortium would have formed, it would have been commandeered by major corporations like Microsoft and Google, and the Gopher protocol would have been upgrade over time to eventualy become a huge, bloated mess that spies on everyone the way the Web does now.

[@JonitoFischer]

The problem isn't the protocol is the content... Web can be fast if you only upload text and web links...

[@imodium438]

The web would be fine without all the bloated extensions, DOM, JavaScript, PHP & HTML 5 garble on top of it. Deprecating those would also make browsers more snappy and less bloated. 1 GB RAM to load a webpage? 10-15 MB / average data transfer for each web page? Christ! One would think ISPs were plotting to push these bloat languages on us to increase webpage load times so their customers go for a bandwidth upgrade. Hmm... Dynamically loaded pages are a mess... whoever thought of them needs to be lined up and shot. Hopefully more efficient *compiled* languages will emerge and replace them -> Go. It's sad that there's not any browser that's truly minimal without breaking websites or severely lacking in features. I don't think the browsers are to blame, but the dependency on the pile of junk loaded on top to support all the runtimes, frameworks, layouts, etc. Which enables less than decent web developer to write a 10 liner using built-in library features at the expense of computational efficiency (which lowers the barrier to entry for tech industries, increasing competition & driving down costs) but further bloats the web. We're lucky that Moore's Law is coming to an end.

[@singletona082]

There is also the small problem of bandwidth and how the US's internet speeds and saturation is... frankly wanting because teleco regional monopolies.

[@EvenTheDogAgrees]

@@imodium438 There's nothing inherently wrong with modern technologies like the DOM, JS, AJAX etc. The problem is how these technologies are used, and the utter state of disarray in which the JS ecosystem finds itself with the myriad of dependencies on dependencies on dependencies. A good example of that was the whole leftpad fiasco a while back. Mind you, I'm a backend (Python) developer who hates JS with a passion. But that's because the language is a hot mess that wasn't designed, but quickly thrown together and never cleaned out. It doesn't make sense, all attempts to coerce it to make sense are kludgy hacks, and it should've been replaced by a proper language runtime decades ago. However, I have no problem with the idea of a sandboxed client-side language that can manipulate the on-screen contents without having the server doing all the heavy lifting. And that language should not be compiled, but interpreted (or compiled client-side), so we can verify and alter what's running on our machines if we so wish. But yeah, the PHP and JS communities appear to have a larger than usual percentage of utter morons who shouldn't be allowed to touch a code editor in the first place, and that's certainly not helping the state of the Web.

[@GreyDeathVaccine]

@@imodium438 PHP is executing on server. It's programmers fault if it takes too long or cheap server :P-)

[@jonahmann]

The problem is that this restriction is not in place, so few people actually do this, and those who do get little traffic. The important word in your post was IF.

[@GabeGinorio]

The web is like a side street in Hong Kong. Totally covered in bright ads and signs and very crowded.

[@FinlayDaG33k]

@@peterjansen4826 And then the site completely stops to work because you blocked their scripts.

[@FinlayDaG33k]

@@peterjansen4826 *cries in 10+ scripts on new website*

[@FinlayDaG33k]

@@peterjansen4826 I don't which sites you visit, but the sites I visit (and visit often due to lack of a suitable alternative) just die without scripts. I have tried NoScript a while ago but holy damn, so much sites that I visit often just go banzai on themselves. Also, I don't see how I'm repeating myself?

[@FinlayDaG33k]

@@peterjansen4826 that, I cannot deny

[@mitchelvalentino1569]

Brilliant analogy.

[@eznix]

I remember job hunting on gopher holes, the NY Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education had great gopher holes for job postings in the early 1990's. Cool video. Thanks.

[@hytti72]

Gopher time was great. No ads anywhere. I'll bet that today over 50% of bandwidth is eaten by ads.

[@OM-bs7of]

Ads keep the internet free tho

[@gixxerist3537]

@@OM-bs7of Well, it was free 30 years ago without ads. Why not anymore?

[@OM-bs7of]

@@gixxerist3537 The web was decentralized back then

[@DGinNC]

@@OM-bs7of Is your internet "free"? Mine isn't I pay for home service and mobile service, far from free. Perhaps I'm missing something?

[@OM-bs7of]

@@DGinNC Free as in free online services. You already pay for internet yea so why should you pay for online services too. Hence ads

[@ZorMon]

Actually the problem is the popularity of "easy drag and drop" CMS, bloated libraries like jquery and bootstrap and intrusive ads that infests the net. If you make a website from scratch, with base css, vainilla java script, optimised images and html5 you will be surprised by the blazing load speed of that page in modern hardware.

[@3nertia]

Yeah but then they couldn't capitalize on every idiot being able to make a website! Heh

[@encycl07pedia-]

Yep, although I took web design classes in the early 20 00s and the textbook was a bit out of date, we were learning HTML only (no CSS or JS) and used tables for formatting. Tabular design was pretty fat, although not nearly as fat as code nowadays. Gopher is still a lot faster and honestly a lot easier to manage/set up.

[@LLPOF]

I got rid of my mouse about 2 months ago. It became just a major distraction for me. Sometime next week I am going to remove my k and g keys from my keyboard. Yes, there are going to be certain words I can't type but it shouldn't be a problem because I ordered a thesaurus from Amazon.

[@jan_harald]

in linux, with x11, you can usually use ctrl-shift-u to insert unicode characters, ANY of them... so it wouldn't be a problem then... ;P

[@BonensProject]

ood idea

[@LLPOF]

@@BonensProject Thanx

[@ChristopherGray00]

@@ahmadismail5407 He was poking fun of the people that promote impractical and inferior software alternatives over more practical and more efficient, mainstream software. If it's mainstream, you'll see alot of people bashing it, even if the system itself is actually amazing, the video title is a good example of this phenomenon, the web is not "broken" in any stretch of the imagination, it is an amazing system that has allowed for an uncountable amount of technological advances and there is still no alternative that can beat it, yet people will still use old, inferior, inefficient, impractical alternatives instead and they will try to bash the big dog, because you're "cool" if you never use mainstream stuff apparently.

[@RussellTeapot]

pfft, talk about distractions... I ditched the monitor long ago, I just installed a panel with switches and LEDs so I can put binary instructions directly into the RAM, no need for bloated BIOSes and stupid crap like that

[@MrHatoi]

To be honest this just seems totally useless. There's nothing stopping websites from serving plaintext over HTTP, or even just not making their sites use so much unnecessary bloatware. At the same time there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to send an HTML file over Gopher. After all, HTML, Javascript, etc. are just plaintext files which are processed by the browser. The only reason why Gopher is associated with minimalism is because browsers don't actually support it so they don't process anything in the page. Just to reiterate: _literally the only feature Gopher has is its lack of support._ Gopher doesn't offer any alternative to viewing images or videos, which makes it useless for anything short of maybe a news site or a informational site. Again, there's nothing stopping people from making minimalist sites with HTML and at least being able to make them look half decent that way. All Gopher does is force people to not use any sort of formatting or media, and again, that's literally just because of its lack of support and lack of features.

[@mr_beezlebub3985]

I've also become frustrated with how bloated and full of ads the web has become. Thankfully ad blockers and tracker blockers fix that somewhat. Websites load so fast when ads don't load

[@encycl07pedia-]

The problem is you're still loading a lot more than you need to. The WWW is unfortunately built on a fat markup language. Take the following: ~~~ This is a sentence. ~~~ versus ~~~ This is a sentence ~~~ No matter what protocol you're on, the latter plain text is going to load faster because it doesn't have to interpret that. And that HTML example was the bare minimum of what I would consider an HTML page (and it doesn't even have a title). Gopher is similar to browsing a file directory. You don't need to worry about bells and whistles and ads and CSS and Javascript. Some people have perverted gophermaps to serve content with links inside like HTML, but they are few and far between and they're STILL faster than loading bloated HTML. And while both protocols can serve up plain text or HTML/CSS/JS, there is a dearth of one or the other depending on which protocol you choose.

[@curtprasky3440]

I used to use gopher all the time, I loved it! I just got to your gopherhole using lynx, the first web browser I ever used. In fact, the story behind that is how I first became acquainted with Linux. My first computer was actually already a dinosaur when I got it. A software engineer friend of mine offered to build me a computer for $100.00. It had a 64MB hard drive, a 3 1/2 inch floppy drive, a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive, 1 MB of RAM and a 1200 baud modem. I used that to connect to a Unix server for my internet connection. As I got accustomed to the Unix command line, I realized that I liked the Unix system much better than the DOS 3.0 my el cheapo computer was running.

[@mrpterodactyl4055]

Gopher, is like Soviet version of internet. Its blytful, no it's glorious.

[@TheL0wner]

i miss the static web of my youth more every day.

[@chakotay9996]

Yes but what are the actual benifits of using Gopher now?

[@hblaub]

The mascott is a little cute animal. And Gopher can't display GIFs and auto-play videos... (which you can disable in Firefox, for example)

[@brainmind4070]

l337 points. "By the way, I use gopher."

[@encycl07pedia-]

Gopher is simple to use, simple to set up, easy to browse (the index pages are either folders or gophermaps that work the same way), *FASTER*, lighter on data use, private, and *FASTER*. E.G. If you don't have unlimited mobile data or have a metered connection, you can fire up Lynx or gopher (the CLI program) and get lots of the same info like news, weather, Wikipedia (Gopherpedia), IMDb (GMDb), Reddit (Gopherddit), xkcd, etc. without loading lots of images and scripts that you don't want. If you're reading articles, you don't have to worry about BS ads that pop up in the middle of every other paragraph or image. You'll also learn to be a bit more efficient since you won't be using a stupid inaccurate mouse to navigate. gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html

[@JosueRodriguez08]

Nothing, this man just likes to say that he dislikes whatever is used by more than 3 people

[@valentinidk6101]

I can think of many things, for text-only docs and people who are skilled with it it's a good information sharing endpoint. And you don't need a lot of money to host a server for it. I think even security, but I haven't read into that one

[@about2mount]

Nice Video. Gopher isn't lost there are many of us using Python Client Servers running home based servers. You do not need to purchase any server for this. Just go live from your machine using Python 3.7. which does this with less than four lines of code. The problem is that someone or several of us need to create or host a connection site or link up site that can list others of us using it along with times or days when we are up and running online. A home based site link would be gopher://my_ip_gateway key or 192.191.241.01 etc. Then have these listed and named on the Connection Site or a link up site called a "Junction" or a "Hive". At least until a group of us can create a router to even go beyond this by actually routing actual site names to our gateway_keys same as Tor does. Another promising thing is I am programming a second dark web browser to run with Enigma that will show images, allow hyperlinks and a nice GUI Presentation for pages using very easy and limited text tags also. My Enigma is a Cipher Algorithm that if you do not have the proper access key cannot be viewed by anyone without the key or the browser and anything but scrambled enigmatic code with no white-space is all they get. This is not related to Encryption either. It works using computer generated ciphered alphabetic rollers similar to how the Germans in WW2 used their Enigma Machine. But with one advantage today. It cant ever be cracked there are too many computer generated rollers working on timed loops. In fact I can post on Facebook with it and then read it, decipher it and without anyone online able to crack it, including images in ciphered format.

[@mitchelvalentino1569]

Fascinating. Any websites you recommend to learn more about any of this stuff?

[@lellyparker]

It's not the web that is broken it is a lot of very bad web-programming by extremely mediocre web developers. Just avoid slow sites and email the owner why. Suggest they get better web programmers. They are far more likely to fix their web page than produce a gopher offering.

[@encycl07pedia-]

1. Stop using "mediocre" as a synonym for "bad." It means middling, ordinary. If you're using "very bad" code, you're not ordinary. 2. The site owners aren't going to care about a few people complaining, and that's all it usually will be. A "slow" site is relative and as much as I've railed against Javascript requirements, my complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Funnily enough Amazon is 90% usable without JS... but I still can't place an order with it.

[@lodestarsd4456]

I love how it's completly impossible to tell when DT is joking with his neutral face. But it's hilarious everytime. May the bloat vanish for ever.

[@JohnnyDystar]

Brother, I am all about this stuff! I have been computing since the mid 80s, so I understand and appreciate everything you've said in this vid. I remember an internet which had more academic information than advertisements, more content than fluff, and I would love to get to the elegance of simplicity and functionality. As you say, let the ones who wrecked it have it. And the same to those that "don't get it." I'm exhausted arguing on the side of private citizen anonymity against data mining, snoopware, clickbait, programmer crunch and other social ills born from corporate internet. I'm ready to click my heals and return home.

[@tronus98]

hyper TEXT markup language. It was never designed for all the multimedia crap being pumped through its veins.

[@Joker200084]

...

[@ArsenGaming]

HYPER TEXT markup language was designed for text, links, and low-resolution images

[@rexevan6714]

It is hyper tho.

[@sky0kast0]

Sure but not intended to be hyper like this

[@jonahmann]

That's why it was expanded with CSS, JavaScript, etc.

[@TheHelvetican]

Thanks 4 intro to gphr. I can sink my teeth into this soft cookie.

[@dimitris470]

If gopher had won, we would have bloated web content loading over gopher instead of http :p (http != www)

[@seriouscat2231]

"If telnet had won, we would have bloated web content loading over telnet instead of http." Do you even understand that web = http, therefore gopher is not web?

[@logangraham2956]

soo.. umm... what makes this different from simply using html and just writing in text. from my prospective it looks like they took the html protocol and stripped it of all the useful stuff.

[@khai96x]

HTML is a document format, not a protocol. The protocol is HTTP, which can be used to serve TXT files.

[@MrHatoi]

@@khai96x Which still begs the question: what's stopping people from serving HTML over Gopher?

[@ukyoize]

@@MrHatoi literaly nothing

[@brainmind4070]

To add to what Khai said, HTTP = HyperText Transfer Protocol HTML = HyperText Markup Language

[@krozareq]

You can do exactly that. Suckless actually made a simple web server that just serves TXT files in a directory. Very small C source, as with everything they do. I would like to see a new simple web standard come about. Naturally it would be hobbyist-oriented and entirely voluntary. Basically just going back to simpler HTML. I would like to see such a thing implemented as a web server with basic database functionality baked in through the use of TXT files such as CSV maybe. The concept of "everything a file." And maybe even stripping down HTML into a simpler markup format for bold, italics, links, anchors, paragraphs, small static images, tables and fields. The server would then interpret the pages into modern HTML for browsers. Grep and sed-like parsing and editing of the DB file etc. Just very minimalist but not lacking some visuals and interaction.

[@hexagonist23]

Plaintext is the way to go. %100 content, %0 garbage.

[@derekr54]

Just tried your gopher site both with Lynx and Firefox, I have learned something newe yet again. Thanks DT

[@EvenTheDogAgrees]

Hmm, haven't mucked around with Gopher back in the day, but it's very reminiscent of a slightly more limited version of the early web. Remember, the early web was just a bunch of static webpages served by some webserver. Then we got some server-side content generation in the form of CGI scripts. Then came PHP, which made it more convenient and lowered the barrier of entry so that complete nincompoops could now write dynamic webpages. Next, we got client-side scripting in the form of JS, and finally separation of content from layout in the form of CSS, and shortly after that I stopped paying attention. But the early web was just static HTML pages, no JS, no CSS, no dynamically generated content, but just plain old static HTML. Which is just a form of plain text file where certain strings of text carry a particular meaning like "make this bold" or "link to this resource", just like Gopher files, or more recently ReStructured Text, Markdown, the various Wiki languages etc... This has the same ingredients: it uses some transport protocol (Gopher instead of HTTP), has a syntax (Gopher Maps rather than HTML), allows hyperlinking to content (but appears to lack syntax for embedding inline images, as it's meant to be used in text mode) is, mostly self-hosted by a relatively small community that links to each other's content. And from what I can tell, it's mostly populated with content about itself. And that last part makes it rather unattractive; I don't mind using alternative protocols to get information, I was a pretty heavy NNTP user back in the day. But when most of the information available over a protocol is information _about_ said protocol, what's the point? Why read books if almost every book in the world is mostly about writing books, and the vast potential of the written word is left entirely untapped? Anyway, I see the attraction of some content space that's unpolluted by Big Corp Inc. But it needs to offer information worth seeking out. And I'm sure Gopher does that, but I'd probably have to spend days hunting down a few interesting resources. And that's just not worth it to me given the wealth of good information available on the Web.

[@encycl07pedia-]

"most of the information available over a protocol is information about said protocol" That's a bit misleading. Yes, there's a lot of self-aggrandizement about the protocol and it's simplicity, but that's not most of what it actually is. A lot of it is minimalism and asylum from the bloated WWW in consuming content. It's tech news. It's glogs AKA phlogs (blogs on Gopherspace). It's reading. It's articles. It's weather forecasts. It's a freer world and one that's far easier to navigate. You can browse/search Reddit, Wikipedia, KZbin, Urban Dictionary, regular dictionaries, news sites, etc. in Gopher.

[@lue016]

And why should i use gopher again? i mean, if i want to host a text file, i can do that in http right?

[@DonBaldwin]

We should set up a Veronica index, and then get Jughead, and Archie working again.

[@jonnykopp]

RSS wasn't a terrible idea. Markdown has been great also. I think the only structure worse than what modern auto generated html has turned into is MS's XML structure for their doc files.

[@3nertia]

When you say "modern auto generated html" are you talk about website that let any idiot with an internet connection throw up a fly-by-night website? Heh

[@encycl07pedia-]

RSS is good. I actually like the .(mso)x files as they're lighter than the .(mso) alternatives. That being said, plain text is just my preferred method nowadays; PDF for any formatting/images and slideshows.

[@markkeilys]

The sub page read "The Web Is Broken Beyond Repair. The Alternative?..." I thought you were going to talk about Freenet...

[@samoylov1973]

Hey, DT, wish you would have kept your gopher alive. Gemini is OK, but it needs special browsers. While Gopher works fine in w3m. Good luck and please make more videos like this.

[@horatiopugwash9183]

TBH, I usually browse the web using ddgr, links, and w3m, ads aren't much of a problem :)

[@kendawg_mcawesome]

Man, I remember like 10+ years ago ranting on bugzilla when it was suggested FF drop support for it.

[@johnrambo4158]

Make a video about OpenVPN and/or alternatives. :)

[@JeffHendricks]

Just wanted to pop in and say I appreciate the digital minimalism. I've been using i3wm for a while, and just started working with gopher. Probably will convert my whole Wordpress blog to static html as well (and mirrored on a gopher server). For people like me who constantly fight distraction and mental noise, pure text web is a godsend. Yes, I understand the irony of saying that on a video content site. But I only watch KZbin now through NewPipe... no ads, the ability to play in the background (no matter what the content), etc.

[@williambarrett7108]

Thank you for the information about gopher. I had never herd about this alternative before! I really enjoy your channel and all I appreciate all the work you put into your videos.

[@marksamuel5872]

This is the best, old school.... A new space to explore... so awesome. Great Mr Distro Tube.... you the man.

[@l00t_t00l]

:o This is so old school, like when things where built to actually work not just break and steal your data. I love this!

[@RaminHonary]

Think about what the Web actually does, though. It is a common platform to run apps over a network. Apps are programmed in JavaScript and HTML, and the apps are downloaded on-demand when you click on a link. You could make the same exact thing out of dozens of technologies today. Let's say, for example, all the major players on the web, like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, all simultaneously decided to re-write their Web apps from the ground up, this time in C++ with Qt, rather than in JavaScript. Then Chrome and Firefox both rewrite their Web browsers from the ground up such that the browser was basically just VirtualBox running Linux. So when you launch the browser, you get what looks like a browser, but in actual fact it is VirtualBox that has booted up, not into a Linux desktop environment, but a native Qt app programmed in C++ running on Linux in the virtual machine. So then you type in Facebook dot com, and rather than downloading a bunch of JavaScript, this browser-like app automatically downloads and installs a "facebook.deb" package into the virtual machine and then automatically launches it so you can start using it the same way you always would. If you were to click on any link in this Facebook app, it would have the browser also automatically download and installs the ".deb" package (if you don't already have it) for that link and run it immediately. This browser would also automatically removes older, not-often used ".deb" packages if you are running low on space. This is basically exactly how the modern Web works, except instead of VirtualBox with Linux and Qt, you have a JavaScript engine like WebKit, and apps are written in JavaScript rather than C++.

[@encycl07pedia-]

It's not binary or true/false. It's not like you stop using HTTP when you start using Gopher. That's what people don't understand. It's not like you stop walking just because you bought a car. HTTP is better at some tasks like bingeing streaming videos, making comments, and running web applications. Gopher is better at pretty much anything involving reading, retrieving files, and low-bandwidth situations.

[@douglas7656]

Definitely making a Gopher flog soon!

[@encycl07pedia-]

phlog*

[@sasakanjuh7660]

Couldn't agree more. Web become such frustrating experience to the extend that I can't click on a link without at least 5 ads poping up. I wish for alternative for quite a while, but was never aware it actually exists, so I'm really excited about this. I'll give it a shot, thanks!

[@sasakanjuh7660]

@Svein Are Karlsen I am Firefox user, but I live plugin free life. I'm not complaining about closing all those ads, it's literally just few seconds of my time, I'm complaining on how corrupted web philosophy became :)

[@sasakanjuh7660]

@Svein Are Karlsen Yes, I share your point of view regarding the matter, but in this case, I think that people which simply just want to get information from the web in non bloated fashion are not interested in power. Just my opinion.

[@mattking6718]

I'm considering adding an export to gopher for my project now, this is pretty cool.

[@riley3269]

Linux needs to actively make improvements to the web ecosystem, not move backwards by using ancient protocols like this. There's no reason to use something like this other than nostalgia or something.

[@encycl07pedia-]

lol. Instead of embracing the solution that already exists, you'd rather have the Linux community fix the totaled car that is the WWW/HTTP (as if the Linux Foundation could control that anyway; it's not the W3C). Gopher is not a move backwards any more than walking is. Regardless of having vehicles that can go thousands of miles per hour, walking is still useful in getting places. Every living thing with working legs walks. The WWW/HTTP is a hammer. It's great for hammering in nails (websites) and being loud without regard to being very precise or elegant. The results are hit or miss. Gopher is a screwdriver that's precise and quiet, easier and requiring less force/power to use it effectively. There's less likelihood of running into a bent screw sticking out (bad, barely-usable gopherhole) versus a bent nail sticking out (bad, barely-usable website). A screwdriver isn't useful for hitting nails and a hammer isn't going to do much with a screw. They each have their place and purpose (with some overlap), and certainly both are useful when building a house. Major sites/services like Reddit, Wikipedia, KZbin, Hacker News, 4chan, Lobste.rs, dictionaries (including UrbanDictionary), Wolfram Alpha, git repos, XKCD, movie show times, the Bible, etc. are all accessible via Gopher and have a lot of benefits over the HTTP versions.

[@torspedia]

I'm more interested in seeing how Solid, Tim Berners-Lee's new project, works out!

[@azechele]

@DistroTube have you looked at gemini? Perhaps it would be worth a video, it's an evolution of gopher, with a markup (inspired by markdown) instead of plain text.

[@Mietchannel]

I cant believe anyone would use this unironically

[@LutherusPandragon]

Finaly someone agrees with me. All the javava, javascript and jq nonsense has gone to far. In 2019 pc uses 64gb ram just to open basic web page. F off web developers

[@khai96x]

How is Gopher any different from HTTP serving TXT files? Heck! I can even use FTP to serve HTML pages and there would hardly be different from HTTP.

[@storerestore]

Gopher is an interactive menu system. Text files aren't interactive.

[@storerestore]

It's also a much simpler protocol than HTTP.

[@initega]

Gopher also works on Pale Moon!

[@melgibson6331]

initega best linux browser its semi private compared to firefox which is skinned onto chrome....naked browser is the best but its only on android as far as i know.

[@rosemarieosborn8625]

Hey DT, thank you for this video, I am sooooooooooooo hooked on Gopher now, I love it. Now I will have to learn the minimalist version of markup, I am a web developer lol but anyway, I am so stoked to get it going, I appreciate it.

[@buriedstpatrick2294]

HTTP really isn't a bloated protocol. Your issue seems to be the client-side implementation, not the protocol. The reason the web is slow is due to a myriad of other factors, mostly caused by browser implementations and frontend decisions. - Unoptimized SPAs - Fancy intensive animations and graphics - Uncompressed images and auto-playing videos - Aggressive tracking algorithms that report everything you click on, and sometimes even where your mouse cursor is at all times - Slow CDNs - Bloated third party dependencies like jQuery, React, Vue, Angular, etc. when they're not really fit for purpose - Dynamic server-side pages with bad backend code (happens more than you think) - Intrusive ads that block the screen All of the above we could easily get rid of under HTTP. HTTP just transfers data on the TCP-protocol with some handshaking on top. In fact, there's really nothing stopping Gopher from having those same exact same problems that the modern web has. If that protocol was popular instead of HTTP, you'd just have companies implementing Javascript-like features and advanced browser rendering engines into those instead. I think a much better solution these days is to just host some Markdown behind a rendering engine. You'll get gopher-adjacent markup which is very easy to write, but not suffer any of the major drawbacks of using abandoned technology. How exactly is starting a Gopher site meaningfully different than just hosting a static web page with some basic HTML-elements -- apart from it being inaccessible to the less technically inclined?

[@sauron1427]

How is gopher superior to plain text (static) http sites? It seems to me the speed difference on a modern system is negligible and since gopher is barely supported an http site would be more accessible. I mean, just look at suckless.org - loading is basically instant despite the css.

[@DistroTube]

Suckless.org has images--BLOAT!

[@xWe2s]

The problem isn't it is hard or anything. The problem is 1) the "convenience" and 2) connection with others. Having HTTP server and "plain text" page is easy. You get a VPS, install node and some static server (ecstatic, or tons others) - again a oneliner, it that renders markdown files and that's it. Markdown is faaar more robust and intuitive, plus there are sweet editors/apps/sites for it. Not to mention plain text editor works too cuz it's dead simple. Heck, you don't even need a "VPS", single-click deploy of any dir or anything with Vercel and npm.im/serve

[@pichass9337]

I remember hearing about Gopher a while ago, I largely dis considered it but not I want to try it out again

[@SlideRSB]

Don't use a web browser like an animal just to view gopher pages. Don't even use Lynx to do that. It's terminal based, but it's still a web browser nonetheless. Use a Gopher client like we did in the good old days. Just being snarky. Use whatever you like. ;-) I honestly thought Gopher was much older than 1991. I didn't realize that Gopher and http are the same age. Learned something new today.

[@jorabart]

My first introduction to www was by following a link in gopher.

[@jan_harald]

gopher has one big flaw... it's pure text, and sensitive gophermaps... you can't have even bold text, ffs and to have links in your text you have to use a hack, and use a gophermap instead of a regular file...

[@jonahmann]

The minimalism is exactly the appeal.

[@jeremiahglover7562]

Text is data.

[@brainmind4070]

Jonah Mann The massive visual cortex in humans would beg to differ. The only reason people use gopher is either as a protest against the admittedly cluttered http web or to appear l337. GUIs exist for a reason.

[@3E6B787B782F2D6E3147]

Re. Mastodon on Gopher, it's not Mastodon but there's an alternative federated social thing called Pleroma that has a Gopher frontend.

[@DistroTube]

Cool! Thanks for sharing!

[@Artoooooor]

Do I understand correctly that it's just a protocol allowing to fetch file from server? Is there anything that prevents serving "bloated" page using it?

[@MrPolluxxxx]

We should find a way to make a gopher imageboard.

[@n0madfernan257]

hello, your content is good. like the minimalism. i guess, sites are also bloated with styles and whatnot thats why the net is very slow. added with metrics that profile every user for ads

[@DevDungeon]

Are you going to suggest Compuserve or Prodigy next? =P Just kidding, love the videos! Great topic too. This is what we'll have to use when they start charging $100/GB

[@DistroTube]

I had a CompuServe account back in the day. Loved it! Ah, I miss the early Internet!

[@Piotr-vw6uj]

Distrotube, there are keys binded to scroll up/down 2 lines (Insert/Delete) take this man: alias web='lynx -image_links -nopause -cookies -scrollbar -tna -useragent=""' also http is not bloated. This cancer that make sites week to load and make them stutter on old hardware is called javascript.

[@canyonstinky7817]

I want an alternative to the internet

[@androth1502]

it would be nice if they made some effort to modernize gopher. maybe add support for markdown.

[@dustinmorse8497]

Next video prediction.... Lynx + Gopher + VIM.

[@alfielawis9082]

lol lynx+gopher+emacs we cant let that war die

[@dustinmorse8497]

@@alfielawis9082 we need to end your pointless religious war! These text editors are dangerous vestiges of the past that don't stand up to scientific scrutiny! Everyone just needs to use nano and move on! ;)

[@rootbeer666]

Mmm, yeah, no one ever said "a picture is worth a thousand words".

[@pigeonduckthing5660]

Have you ever given W3M a shot, it's my favorite terminal browser.

[@rodjacksonx]

Guy with KZbin channel touts text-based internet browsing. Suuuuuurrrrrrrre, buddy!

[@PearComputingDevices]

A good terminal extension by the way is Fish. I use it with powerline.

[@RobBoudreau]

I don't know if any are still available DT, but you might be able to find BBS software for Gopher. I remember back in the day using several Gopher BBS', they can be set up to work something like a "social" site, where people can create user accounts and post questions and comments. All text of course, so emoji's are out. ;-)

[@maimere]

Hey, DT! Nice video, I'll try it myself! Do you have an opinion on the Gemini protocol?

[@GreyDeathVaccine]

web site vs gopher hole ==> gopher hole sounds kinda cool :-)

[@brainmind4070]

That's pretty interesting, but it's obvious why http won out. Most people prefer graphical interfaces, and for good reason. For the casual user, remembering the syntax of commands and parsing text files is cumbersome compared to clicking on intuitive icons laid out in a sensible format.

[@digitalcrow5054]

"And i'm ready to leave it behind" Bruh ! You know this isn't gonna happen dude! What are you even talking about ?

[@briannacluck5494]

Any time I try to connect to my gopher server I get a server timeout. Any ideas? Do I need to change folder permissions somewhere?

[@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic1636]

Is it possible to stream vidoes of gopher like youtube and peertube?

[@DistroTube]

Nothing like that on gopher. Video wasn't even considered when the gopher protocol came out in 1991. The hard drives of that era would not hold a single video of mine. And let's not even talk about the Internet speeds back then. :D

[@tiberiusmagnificuscaeser4929]

Not like KZbin, but you can store Video files on gopher servers and download/view them that way

[@NoMatureContent]

I am very very new to Linux and this is still another language to me. This is very very interesting none the less though. Gopher and Lynx and its history is very cool.

[@ireneuszgabrys]

I just set up my gopher hole (with dynamic channels page) gopher://g.gumen.pl I love it! It's funny because I'm a Web Dev and now I'm using gopher. Unfortunately I still have mostly http links there. But that will change. It really takes no time to set up, especially when you already have server. Big thanks for video. I had no clue that there is alternative.

[@XVSlyke]

What happens if you want a site with any kind of dynamic features or componentization? Gopher seems to be similar to displaying a text file with links any maybe images on the web. With HTML & PHP or JS, you can reuse what you might call components. For example, what if you wanted to change something about every video you have on that page with hundreds of videos? If you use Javascript, each of those can act as a component and be dynamically rendered. Would you write every change out by hand in gopher maps for that example? Perhaps HTTP is better simply because you can develop this componentization whenever you could need it. If you have a large site, there's a good chance a need for that could come up. You suggested that gopher is simpler to set up and host. I agree, but I think it's only marginally easier, and while you still need to deal with markup tags, and manually set up a server if you're hosting it yourself, you don't really need MySQL or Wordpress as you suggested to create a simple HTTP site which is similar to what gopher can do. I'm just asking whether some of these features are available or able to be added because I'm actually interested in the technology, and wondering if it's practical for anything outside of static text pages. It seems like the markdown of web protocols at the moment, and I'm sure there's value in that. If you're sure you just want very simple text sites that you can write even more simply than markdown, it seems like the way to go. To sum it up, it seems like the only real advantage Gopher has is saving some time writing markup, and fast server setup, while it has the disadvantages of not supporting anything dynamic which you might want when setting up a site. To me, not having to edit every single file to make 1 change throughout a site would be worth using HTTP to me. If I have absolutely any structure to the site, I'd want to use HTTP. However, you could argue: That's no way to set up a site anyway and it should be as minimalist as possible so you don't have to reuse components. Still, what if you want to change the structure of the site and you have many gopher maps. I just can't get over that issue. Would you convert it to HTML at that point? Surely that wouldn't be too hard. I bet we could even write software to do that automatically. Thanks for the video, and introducing me to a technology I wasn't aware of.

[@ronslayton5270]

About 7 years back, I started writing white papers for a Gopher-v2 to be used for libraries to be able to share media files between branches, as well as have a completely barebones media & info display (just text and digital media), and a special lookup system featuring info & media about a title. It could also be used as an overflow service - especially on websites who're part of a network. It would be text-compatible with gopher-v1 servers via a trick (a v2 client would put a "+" at the beginning of the request, if communicating with a v2 server the server would reply with a code, kicking the client into v2 mode - else it would remain in v1 mode). Kinda lost the whole thing over the years.

[@DrewPicklesTheDark]

While the bloat sucks, by big problem with the modern internet is that it was flooded with normies which in turn attracted all the mega-corps which effectively bought the entire internet and turned it in to an ad-ridden shithole. The bloat is just a side effect.

[@blahdelablah]

There's a similar protocol to Gopher called Gemini that is worth checking out if you like Gopher.

[@Randomizer92mx]

The good thing about computers and the Internet is that it always has the power to reinvent itself if people support this idea. Thanks to this video I found out about Gopher (which I haven't heard of before).

[@dogsauce19]

You had me at pop tart

[@johnpeterson7264]

Wow - great video and great channel. Sounds like a super neat idea to check out gopher . Have you also talked about IRC ?

[@DistroTube]

Join us on #distrotube on the Freenode network. ;)

[@MichaelBruceTaos]

Dude, this video speaks to my heart. I'm in all the way.

[@singletona082]

Finally bit the bullet and installed pygopher on my raspberry pi, and after things settle I plan on aiming it at the web to see what happens. It is exceedingly low bandwidth. As in rounding errors in network traffic Edit: since this post o have moved on to Gemini as it suits my sensebilities more and provides features I find important.

[@melgibson6331]

I went to the UofM where it was being created and got its gopher name....i remember one of the first things printed on the dot matrix printer at my fraternity house was ....take a wild guess....think about a year later i had a sega saturn adapter that created a prodigy account for the www at 19.95 a month at 33kb. I used my 480i crt sony tv as the monitor....actually worked well for the time.

[@landoc05]

Linux growth is fueling the re-birth of Gopher because it comes installed by default, or it's easy to install and have working in a minute.

[@Doryopaint]

Go for Gopher!

[@StannyObelisk]

Are there any popular gopher websites? It would be great if there would be a search engine for gopher.

[@dustinmorse8497]

Installed lynx last night, can't wait to see what you put on your websi...I mean gopher hole.

[@NebulaHatesWatchdog]

Lynx has smooth scrolling, you should look at your lynx config a bit more.

[@Dr_Steal_Computer]

all the internet needs is a scripting language, no HTML alternatives, no CSS alternatives. unfortunately there are no good scripting languages.

[@KoKoKen]

YEAH BABY THIS YEARS THE YEAR THE GOPHER PROTOCOL MAKES A COME BACK WOO!!!!!!!!!!

[@tyh2989]

After watching this I wondered if Android had a Gopher app. I found one, installed it, browsed some weather related stuff...not bad. It mentioned at start up if I'd be willing to allow anonymous crash reporting. I thought ok I'd help for that ...then I read enough of the actual privacy policy to read Google, AdMob Google analytics were involved. .... stopped there. Uninstalled app. 😠😡🤬

[@jonahmann]

Try a firefox plug-in.

[@nateedwards1313]

Is GopherCities a thong? Because the world needs that.

[@nerrufam7105]

shouldn't you use 80 when you link to http? (i have no idea, just asking)

[@JosephDickson]

I feel like using Links solves this problem from a consumption and browsing perspective. Naturally, Gopher seems simple compared HTML / CSS / PHP / WordPress. I didn't know about Gopher so thanks for sharing.

[@encycl07pedia-]

It's not that simple. Gopher is what you see is what you get. Pretty much everything (save a few ridiculous gophermaps) is transparent and simple to navigate. There are no hidden fees, paywalls, preloaded error text, lazy loading images, and CloudFlare "protection" like so many websites use. I use Lynx and Links2, but even then so many WWW sites are simply unusable without Javascript and loading a bunch of foreign assets (external JS, CSS, etc.). Gopher doesn't have this problem.

[@sumdumbmick]

'the web has become a complete dumpster fire' I mean... it always was, so yes.

[@jan_harald]

overbite NX is WAYYY better than WX... though it's also a little trickier to install... cause you have to copy about two extra files to some obscure place... difference is whether you view it locally, or use an external service with it's own banner and stuff