Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gopher and Gemini Can Co-exist, They're Not the Same

Video download link | md5sum 605608feb13aaba90bda86094d6fcd6c Gemini and Gopher Compared Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: There are some misconceptions about what Gemini is compared to Gopher; the video above demonstrates the difference by browsing/navigating through some Gopher pages

Little less than a year ago people expressed scepticism and also ridiculed us for embracing Gemini and adding presence in Geminispace. Some people who had relied on hearsay decided to dismissively say that Gemini Protocol is little but a "love letter to Gopher" (as if it's just another Gopher). Since then adoption of the protocol -- in terms of the number of capsules -- has more than trebled. Yes, in less than a year!



Castor with geminiSoftware with support for Gemini is increasing in terms of size and in terms of number (e.g. number of Gemini clients and scripts/converters for GemText). There are already several search engines for Geminispace (Totally Legit Gemini Search (TLGS) continues to grow) and Gemini's founder came back from a long hiatus just over two months ago. In his own words: "Despite my total lack of involvement for several months and the lack of any progress on the spec, Geminispace *itself*, which is our real goal, has neither stagnated nor shrunk. It has only gotten better. Awesome things like smol.pub have turned up. All the time there are more and more people setting up little digital homes in Geminispace, who accept and embrace Gemini as it is right now, and many of them are very happy with the status quo. They are writing truly wonderful content, and I have not come across a single thing written there yet which made me think "right now this is merely good, but it could be excellent if only Gemini supported X, Y or Z". And all of this is hosted on diverse servers and compatible with diverse clients, including clients which have not been updated in months. All of this says we have gotten the most important things right or close enough to right already, and there is no risk of catastrophically messing anything up if we simply resolve outstanding technical issues with the minimum possible change."

I'm NOT Gemini (meme)Any further changes to the protocol (GemText in particular) would likely entail a massive overhaul in capsules, e.g. regenerating all pertinent pages, which is time-consuming and risky (cannot test things exhaustively to assure sanity in our case because we have close to 40,000 pages in Gemini).

On a separate note, it may help to think of Gemini as a modernised Gopher rather than profoundly more advanced (read: complicated) variant of Gopher. As Gopher is mostly an historical thing from another era we can leave it aside and focus on Gemini instead. No need for Gopher to go away, it can co-exist with a sort of 'successor', made to adopt encryption and broader character sets.

An associate reminds us that "in Gemini, TLS is obligatory. Also it has links and some limited structural elements."

Contrariwise, "Gopher is just a plain file + a directory structure, without encryption. The main downside to Gemini is the bug where it does not send the size of the file in advance."

Recent Techrights' Posts

Jamie Zawinski Complained About Wayland, Then Decided to Give It a Go, Now Complains Again About Wayland
Ask IBM (Red Hat) why it's worth throwing so much away just for Wayland fanaticism
Russia Set to Ban Facebook?
If WhatsApp is made to "leave", that means Facebook or "Meta".
Taking Stock of a Good and Productive Week
We shall now be taking a break, unpacking the new hard drive (8 TB), and making backups of everything
Ageism in Tech
Your protocol is "old"...
 
Links 20/07/2025: Fending Off BRICS and US Government Attacks Its Own Media (Like China and Russia)
Links for the day
Framed by social control media: Alex Belfield, Voice of Reason
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/07/2025: Summertime and OCC25 Wrap-up
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu, LinuxSecurity, and More
former "Linux" blogs which basically became slopfarms
Links 20/07/2025: More GAFAM Lawsuits, Layoffs, and SLAPPs
Links for the day
Nice Recovery (From Actual Fire) by PCLinuxOS, New Version of PCLinuxOS Released, Now Top of DistoWatch
PCLinuxOS is a community-driven distro
More Microsoft Shutdowns That Mostly Slipped Under the Radar
Remember what happened to books 'sold' by Microsoft?
Microsoft Lunduke Still Fighting Cancel Culture With... Cancel Culture
There will be no "winners" in such 'debates'
The History of Daily Links and Politics
"I support Wayland, but I also support abortion..."
Microsoft is at 0% "Market Share" in Most Areas
Depending on the taxonomy chosen, there may be dozens of categories other than desktops and laptops
"The moment MSFT stock fails to start tumbling, that’s the beginning of another corporate giant going under."
There are far more layoffs at Microsoft than at Intel, but you would not get this impression based on Wall Street media
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 19, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 19, 2025
Gemini Links 19/07/2025: Git For Authors and Filtered Antenna
Links for the day
UEFI 'Secure' Boot Abuses by Microsoft to be Brought Up in the UK High Court in 3 Months
we'll seek compensation
Next Year It'll Be Half a Decade Since the Fall of Freenode (and IRC is Still Doing OK)
Our IRC network is still accessible using the exact same software that ran in Windows 3.x
Lupa Will Soon Know of 3,100+ Active Gemini Capsules
And some people in the "Small Web" try to tell us that Gemini is dying?
The Slopfarms Are Taking Real News Articles and Replacing Them With Lies Generated by Machines
Bluntly speaking, Fagioli is nothing short of an online scammer
Links 19/07/2025: Techtarget to Cull 10% of Staff, New Threats to Free Press in the US (Home of Dangerous and Violent Stranglers From Microsoft)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/07/2025: "Climate Justice” and Forking Programs
Links for the day
What Wayland and Microsoft/IBM systemd Have in Common
focus on what IBM (Red Hat) is pushing while running over critics.
Linux Already Has About 60% of the "Market"
"When mentioning the client side," opines an associate, "it is essential to recite the list of other markets where Microsoft is negligible or a no-show. It is repetitive to do so, but it needs saying -- often."
In Norway, Android/Linux Has Just Hit All-Time High (First Time Since 2020), GNU/Linux Already Very Prevalent
Despite its small population size, Norway gave us Qt and many other things
Finland (and NATO) Must Move to GNU/Linux and Dump Microsoft Even Faster
"Microsoft is not a technology problem, it is a staffing problem."
Microsoft's Mass Layoffs Very Wide-Ranging, Media Focused on Gaming Though Microsoft Mass-Firing Lawyers and "AI" Staff (Contradicting Its Supposed "Investment" in "AI")
Microsoft plans to fire almost half a thousand people in legal roles
2012 Article About the Free Software Foundation Blasting Canonical/Ubuntu Over Adoption of "Secure" Boot (Microsoft's Remote Control Over GNU/Linux Since PCs' Power-on)
By Katherine Noyes (article has since then became 404, not found)
The Microsofters We Sued Helped Microsoft Make GNU/Linux 'Expire' This Year
"Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration"
linuxconfig.org Joins linuxtechlab.com and Others, Becomes a Slopfarm With Fake Linux 'Articles' (LLM Slop)
They contain "linux" in their domain names, but they are just slopfarms
Links 19/07/2025: Microsoft Cuts in China and Wall Street Journal Sued for Reporting on Jeffrey Epstein
Links for the day
Debian Can Dump Blind Users Because I am Not Blind
the sort of mentality we're up against
Fascistic Policies Got 'Normalised' in 'Public Office'. Let's Not Let the Same Happen in 'Tech'.
Political discourse typically guides what's "normal" and what "good citizens" should believe/feel
The European Patent Office Cannot Attract Proficient Patent Examiners Who Master Their Domain
They are enablers and facilitators of corruption
Yes, Your Mastodon Instance Will Also Shut Down
Few people run a one-person instance in the Fediverse
The Demise of GAFAM Necessitates Greater and Broader Awareness
Morale at Microsoft is really bad
Free Software Foundation Reaches 75% of Funding Goal
Not bad for this "Fosschild"
Slopwatch: 7 New Examples of Fake 'Linux' Slop Pieces (Plagiarism With Misinformation)
Serial Sloppers need to be shunned
Links 19/07/2025: Kapo-berg Settles, Software Patents Challenged
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 18, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 18, 2025
Links 18/07/2025: Peace With PKK and Connie Francis Dies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: Alhena 5.1.8 and Bornhack 2025
Links for the day
How to Top Up a "Limited Liability" With Even More Limitations (Dodging Accountability in the UK)
Some people call it a "shell game". Sometimes it's done for tax evasion purposes.
Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Inches Towards 75% of Fund-Raising Target
Will the cutoff date be extended again?
Gemini Space (or Geminispace) Grows, But Usage of Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops Further
Ideally, all Gemini capsules should use self-signed certificates
Links 18/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs in Activision, The New Stack (Sponsored by Microsoft) Complains About Openwashing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: OCC25 Gnus for Reading Usenet and RSS Feeds, Small Web Updates
Links for the day
[Meme] 9AM Meeting at Brett Wilson LLP
Brett Wilson LLP in space
Listing as Staff People Who Left the Company More Than Six Years Earlier
There are apparently no laws against that
Brian Fagioli Shovels Up LLM Slop (Plagiarism) Onto Slashdot, Then Uses Slashdot for Affirmation or as Badge of Honour
Notice how some of his latest slop is presented ("as featured on Slashdot")
Social Control Media Productivity
Snapping photos of the bone
The Law Firm SLAPPing Us For the Microsofters Lost 72% of Its Tangible Assets in the Past Year, According to Its Own Reports
That might help explain why they're willing to tolerate serial stranglers from Microsoft as clients
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com Slopfarm and Slopfarms Propped Up by Google News
"As LLM slop is foisted onto the WWW in place of knowledge and real content, it now gets ingested and processed by other LLMs, creating a sort of ouroboros of crap."
Links 18/07/2025: Weather Events and Health Hazards
Links for the day
Microsoft's All-Time Low in Finland
Microsoft is in a freefall
Security: Shane Wegner & Debian statement of incompetence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 17, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 17, 2025