Why It Matters That 4,000 Gemini Capsules Are Known to Lupa and Why Gemini Protocol Matters to Us
MANY curious, inquisitive people out there on the Net still do not use Gemini Protocol (either as hosts or as users/visitors) because they assume it'll just go away. But it's not going to. As noted here earlier (4,000 Gemini Capsules), we're getting many requests over Gemini (150,677 yesterday, 77,132 2 days ago, 52,824 3 days ago) and we're still finding lots of material in Geminispace, which has plenty of active capsules. Not all of them can be described as "by geeks, for geeks" (contrary to common misconception). Running a capsule in Geminispace is a lot easier than running a Web site. It is technically simpler. It's also cheaper.
When we adopted Gemini Protocol in 2021 (I had been repeatedly eyeing it since 2020 when it was still small and relatively obscure) the whole capsule ran on a single-board computer (SBC). It was a Raspberry Pi with copper connection at my home (connected over Wi-Fi to the hub). A year or two later it could slow down the entire home connection (taking up or using up the entire - at full overall speed - capacity on our ISP link) and was under too much request-related load - to the point of significant slowdowns and high latency upon page fetches. In 2022 I moved it from Wi-Fi to Ethernet. It felt like a demotion and it also moved downstairs. Last September (with further adaptations until December) we finally moved the whole capsule to a server room. It's here in the UK. It's not far from us. I no longer need to worry about the hardware (I had to rebuild the whole system several times in 2 years; it's a big job when flash devices burn out along with the entire operating system, necessitating recovery from external backups).
I have no doubt Gemini Protocol will continue to expand because it solves a real problem - a growing problem as a matter of fact. Its usage ought to expand as more people recognise the issue and the underlying problems, which cannot be trivially solved in HTML and HTTP/S. It's what Alexandre Oliva spoke about in LibrePlanet - the enshittification online.
So, long live Gemini Protocol and to Hell with Google... for 'hijacking' the word "Gemini" - probably by intention given both the context and the timing. █
