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How to Try Gemini Without Installing Any New Software (and Without World Wide Web Gateways)

Video download link



Summary: Trying out Gemini space (or protocol) is a lot easier than most people realise; there's not even a need to install anything

EARLIER today LWN released (from its paywall with a one-week duration) this new introduction to Gemini. It's nice to see Gemini space/protocol receiving more recognition, driven partly by its fast growth. The number of capsules is fast-approaching thousands (the "known" ones) and the number of pages, all in all, probably exceeds a million even if not all are visible (and publicly known about). There's a simple way to navigate the Gopher/Gemini space (think of it as a subset of "cyberspace", reachable over the Internet) and all it requires is an SSH client. Run the following command:



"Getting started with Gopher was never hard and Gemini is arguably easier because there's no need to worry about stuff like modems."

ssh kiosk@gemini.circumlunar.space


"kiosk" is a generic guest account, so there's no need to change this command, only to run it in the terminal. Windows users may be out of luck; their operating system is built on a pile of ancient spaghetti code, which never catches up with standards, only makes up fake standards, which it won't follow itself (like ECMA OOXML).

To get a client installed locally (e.g. for a 64-bit machine) it's possible to just download the binary, e.g.:

wget https://bombadillo.colorfield.space/binaries/bombadillo-2.3.3_linux_64.zip


Or just curl the file/address above (bombadillo-2.3.3_linux_64.zip).

Getting started with Gopher was never hard and Gemini is arguably easier because there's no need to worry about stuff like modems. Navigation is also improved and there are search engines (notably GUS at gemini://gus.guru)

Most of Techrights is already in Gemini space. It can be reached on the following address: gemini://gemini.techrights.org

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