New here, a few questions

Nice to meet you all.

Firstly, I've noticed this place is also accessible from Gemini, but I'm quite new to using that and (with Kristall as my browser) haven't quite figured out if I can log in and post from there, or if I have to do it from the web instead. If possible I would like to, as I find Gemini to be quite cozy and I'm so incredibly sick of Firefox.

Secondly, I was curious if anybody had any other suggestions for somebody interested in exploring niche websites and alternative protocols in general. I've got some nice links bookmarked to explore in Gopher and Gemini, but what else interesting is out there? I know of i2p and ipfs and intend to check them out sometime (though I must admit the Tor side of things has me a bit hesitant) too. There's also Telnet BBSes (https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/), but I've yet to find a client on Linux that doesn't mess up the formatting. Putty came close but any ASCII art seemed to end up horrible misaligned.

Forums are something I really miss, and I'm hoping to find somewhere to replicate that experience to some extent.

tracker

Welcome to the Midnight, ~bastokian!

I've been an almost daily user of Gemini for the past 3 or 4 years, and I visit the Midnight Pub using my Gemini browser (elpher) several days each week. While the host hasn't yet implemented posting or replying directly from Gemini clients, you can do so using the `midnight.sh` shell script provided on the Midnight Pub user manual page:

gemini://midnight.pub/manual

Check out the section called "Post using your terminal".

Incidentally, that's how I'm writing this post right now. *wink*

threkk

As far as I know, you can only post using the traditional web : /

Howdy ~bastokian,

afraid of TOR? Why? I use it practically all day with the torbrowser. Much more quiet web experience. Slower, too. It helps to be a bit sporty about admitting only needed domains.

Other protocols? Be sure to explore John Goerzen's site, reading about nncp, yggdrasil, ethernet-over-serial, kermit and other goodies.

https://www.complete.org/

Have fun!

fuka_eri

Not exactly what you asked for, but since you're sick of Firefox, I can recommend qutebrowser for websites such as this one. There's a bit of a learning curve with all the keybindings and commands, but once you get used to it it's incredibly pleasant to use, in my opinion.

I'm also new here and I'll be checking back because I'm also interested in some recommendations! I tried to use ZeroNet yesterday but whenever I came across a link that looked interesting, there weren't any peers available so I couldn't open it. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

bastokian

That's an idea I've been toying with. I still "need" Firefox (specifically, the uMatrix addon) for surfing crappy websites, but I could browse websites I trust in an alternate browser. I hear qutebrowser doesn't phone home. I've also messed around with BadWolf a little, a very minimal browser that doesn't depend on Chromium or Mozilla and has buttons to toggle allowing JS and images, which is nice.

ZeroNet sounds interesting but I'm not sure how I feel about storing other people's website content on my PC. Sounds... potentially quite messy, legally speaking.