Gemini, an internet protocol

[starbreaker]

I am sad to see it go but I feel like gemini was too exoteric esoteric to gain (and maintain) traction :/

It was too esoteric, but as somebody who was kinda active in that scene (I used to be on the mailing list and run a little public server at tanelorn.city from early 2020 to the middle of 2021) I noticed the following problems.

• Hosting a Gemini server is strictly a DIY affair. You either need to be willing to self-host on residential internet or run your capsule on a rented virtual private server (VPS), unless you were willing to have your site hosted on somebody else's server and trust them to be capable sysadmins.
• Being a sysadmin for a Gemini server meant being a UNIX or Linux sysadmin.
• If you already have sysadmin skills, Gemini didn't have anything meaningful to offer over running a static website and just not using JavaScript.
• If you were determined to publish plain text and didn't want to use HTML and CSS, Gemini didn't have anything meaningful to offer over Gopher. And compared to the Web, hardly anybody uses Gopher besides UNIX enthusiasts.
• Gemini server software was generally janky. I had a nightly cron job set up just to restart the server daemon every six hours or so.
• Gemini didn't have its own upload capability; you had to push files over SFTP (FTP over SSH) or HTTP. They had to create a separate protocol for uploads called Titan. (I suggested that name on the mailing list.)
• Gemtext is just a half-assed version of Markdown that has its own syntax for hyperlinks.

[arcus]

I still have a capsule in Esperanto. I don't update it often, but it's a nice place to throw blog posts onto.

Despite losing it's momentum, there's a plant watering game that is still very active. Copy pasting off the front page:

Recent activity...

🌼 lambdatronic watered their plant 0 minutes ago.
🌼 doc watered their plant 0 minutes ago.
🌼 rainfall watered their plant 1 minute ago.
🌼 biggor watered their plant 1 minute ago.
🌼 Ossirian watered their plant 1 minute ago.

People really love watering their virtual plants. I've checked it at random times, and it's always just as busy.

[SeaSlugUFO]

Bumping this thread to see if others are still active on Gemini, if anyone has created a capsule that they want to share, or just chit chat  I'm just now discovering this thread so I don't have a capsule but I really love the ideology behind it and I'm excited to learn more 

[Spots]

I've been spending more time browsing Gemini lately, but it's hard to really get into it because every website looks exactly the same and I haven't come across much fun stuff. The novelty and mystique of it wears off pretty quickly and I don't think there's enough left to keep me interested in the long term. I do love the concept of it, though, and I think we're desperately in need of a reset when it comes to web technology and browsers. Lately, I've been interested in simplifying everything I do and exploring more primitive alternatives to the software I use, but I'm finding that extreme minimalism quickly starts to feel maddeningly bland.

[nehnix]

I believe that in the quest for minimalism, Gemini failed to be honest to itself about how the modern web is used by people. I've heavily enjoyed Gemini, but its capabilities have clearly been stretched to the limit by people who desperately want it to do more than it can.

One reason why I believe Gemini never really got popular beyond the linux/sysadmin crowd is because to appreciate Gemini, you have to understand the surrounding context. Someone who is not interested in "technology" (using it as a vague blanket term here) does not understand why Gemini is interesting or particularity revolutionary; It just looks like a worse experience compared to the modern web. Almost nothing they expect and need from the modern web experience is available to them.

I believe that if an alternative to the modern web (HTTPS/CSS/Java) is feasible, it needs to actually address the way people interact with the modern web instead of shying away from it in pursuit of a false ideal. A far better approach IMO is more thoughtful design as apposed to less design.

That being said, this criticism is not *entirely* fair. Gemini was never intended to be an alternative to the modern web, despite the attitudes of many.