Burrowing Beneath – A Gopher Zine: Issue 1 – November 10th, 2024

Author: talos
Contact: mdsj at disroot dot org

Index:

1. Intro: Burrowing in the 21st Century
2. Chapter 1: Famous and noteworthy phlogs to get you started.
3. Chapter 2: Gopher servers.
4. Chapter 3: Gopher clients.
5. Chapter 4: Other small web protocols.
6. Outro: We’re just getting started!

Intro: Burrowing in the 21st Century.

Welcome to the first issue of Burrowing Beneath!, where we discuss all things Gopher!

Gopher has been around forever it seems, but rarely do people actually discuss the community
behind it, the people who make it happen, and why it continues to thrive even now. Well with this zine, I hope to fix that. One of the major hosters of gopher stuff is sdf.org, and they have been instrumental in getting people to try out small web protocols on a Netbsd based system, myself included! So a lot of thanks goes out to them and their continuing education regarding Unix based systems and the web.

Now I’d like to get to the heart of the matter, today we have kinds of social media sites, from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, Mastodon and many. many others. They(Excepting Mastodon), all seem to be focused
on one thing, building engagement, getting clicks, popularity etc. Gopher is the antithesis of that, having been
created in an environment before the takeover of the web by hostile entities who seem to only want to get money
out of it, instead of creating a good atmosphere that promotes reading, writing and linking. So to me, having a
gopher hole in this day and age is an act of defiance, a way to express that the academically focused, the scientific, the community orientation of the web is still here to stay.

How can we keep moving forward to promote that way of thinking? I don’t have an answer to that, but I ask that
you, the reader, ponder this question to yourself and spread it to others, and collectively we can find a means to
produce an answer that is satisfying to yourself and everyone else. We’ve seen the results of what bad algorithms, terrible AI-infused systems and other unnecessary and trite uses of modern technology can do, so I know we can do better, as people who understand what sets apart the web of old with the shallowness of the web of the new.

People may want flashy websites, easy to use apps and other niceties, which is all well and good, because they can
interact with other people and potentially find useful information. However, more often than not, that useful
info is hidden behind many portals, or nowadays potentially AI hallucinated. Lots of misinformation is easily spread
far and away to every corner. I think it rests on the rest of us, those of the old web, to show that the web(And gopher
of course), can be a way to understand each other without the need for likes, subscriptions, following and many other
algorithmic procedures that get in the way of real human understanding.

Finally, to end this train of thought, I hope to promote a commonality between Gopher and other small web protocols, such as Gemini, and that together, our communities can provide a greater good for everyone.

Thanks!

Chapter 1: Famous and noteworthy phlogs to get you started.

So now that you’ve discovered gopher, maybe you’re thinking “Where do I go from here?”. There’s lots of places to go! First and foremost on my mind at all times is the SDF website, which provides a howto guide for gophering. Whether getting started on SDF with your free account, or hosting your own gopher hole, it’s still important to know who’s who in the gopherverse.

So here’s a list to get you started:

1. gopher://sdf.org:70/1/ – SDF’s gopher site! No need for an introduction, really.
2. gopher://gopher.black/ – Tomasino’s Gopher site, has links to many other gopher phlogs as well, highly recommended.
3. gopher://tilde.town:70/1/ – Tilde Town’s gopher hole, lots of cool users on there to check out.
4. gopher://gopher.floodgap.com:70/ – The Floodgap Gopher server, one of the oldest ones!
5. gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1/ – Another excellent space to check out!

So once you’ve checked out those places, I think you’ll get a good understanding of how good gopher is and it’s impressive, even now, community. From the first pioneers of gopher holes, to new decentralized zones, gopher encompasses many ideas of communities and self-actualization through information sharing, phlogging(The gopher term for blogging), file-sharing and the need for open-source federated protocols and the like. It’s truly one of a kind!

Chapter 2: Gopher servers.

So you’d like to run your own server now and join the hundreds of others doing the same, right? Well, to do that, it’s “relatively” easy to get started. First, you do honestly need usually some sort of Unix knowledge, such as how to navigate the command-line, how to create files, and
how to use a text editor such as vi(m) or emacs or nano. Furthermore, it’s good to have an understanding of domains and domain names, server security such as firewalls and such. For newbies this can seem very daunting, so I would recommend starting with an SDF or one of the Tilde’s server
and going from there, as they usually feature tutorials and such to use their specific server software. Anyways, if you do choose to do it yourself, I’d recommend one of the following servers:

1. https://motsognir.sourceforge.net/ – Motsognir is a pretty straight-forward gopher server, although it hasn’t been around the longest compared
   to others.
2. http://www.gophernicus.org/ – Then we have Gophernicus, which is what SDF uses. Runs on pretty much anything and everything. Highly recommended!
3. https://github.com/michael-lazar/pygopherd pygopherd – Pretty good and reliable too, from what I hear.
4. https://github.com/sternenseemann/spacecookie Spacecookie – Also reliable, I run it on my gopher server in a jail.
5. http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?a=gopher%3A%2F%2Fgopher.floodgap.com%2F1%2Fbuck Bucktooth – Very, very old server software, but still in use! And still updated!

Chapter 3: Gopher clients.

Of course, you wanna see other gopher phlogs as well, and to do that, there are several good clients out there nowadays that are very easy to use!

First, we’ll start with GUI clients:

1. https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange – Lagrange is a very popular choice for it’s support not only for gopher, but for gemini as well, and it’s
   UI similar to popular web browsers.
2. https://kristall.random-projects.net/ – Kristall is also a popular choice, and is also highly recommended!

TUI(Terminal)

1. https://bombadillo.colorfield.space/ – bombadillo, a very easy to use Gemini client, one of my personal favorites.
2. https://lists.sr.ht/~michel-slm/elpher – Elpher, a gemini and gopher client for Emacs, also a personal favorite!
3. https://github.com/jansc/ncgopher – Fancy interface, haven’t tried it myself though.

So those are my picks for GUI and TUI software, hope this list helps you get started exploring the vast world of gopher!

Chapter 4: Other small web protocols.

There are other protocols out there as well, and I’d like to list a few. First of all is the major player called Gemini.
If you don’t know anything about Gemini, it is very similar to Gopher except it has security features using TLS and
links and formatting is generally easier to do than Gopher.

Gemini has been around for a bit by now, and I would recommend checking out some sites on Gemini as well.

Then we have Nex and Spartan, which have similar ideas to Gemini, but par it down to make it more like Gopher. I
believe everyone should also check them out.

Finally, in small web protocol space we have a new email(!) protocol called Misfin. I don’t know much regarding it
because I haven’t used myself, really, but I’d love to give it a try!

Here’s some links to the above:

1. Gemini – https://geminiprotocol.net/
2. Nex – https://nightfall.city/nex/
3. Spartan – https://portal.mozz.us/spartan/spartan.mozz.us/
4. Misfin – https://github.com/JCLemme/misfin

Outro: We’re just getting started!

So now you’ve seen how cool Gopher(And other small web protocols) is, so get involved in the community with us!
We still can can go so far in what Gopher can inspire in others to do and see!

That’s all for now, folks, see you all next issue!

Document License: CC BY