Gateways for Gemini and Gopher

I have long been a proponent of alternative networks. And of the 'small internet'. These are movements which take us back to the civilised days of the web, before it became the corporate controlled wild west it has today. Oh, and just as good, they are not blocked in China - the government never thought of it!

Gopher is an old protocol predating the WWW; it has for many years been a haven for those who hate the way the web became - spam, user tracking, spyware, cookie prompts on every page and advertising popups are unheard of here. I hate the type of sites where every page takes 20 seconds to load even on a 1Gb connection, as everything jumps around on the screen and popup after popup jumps on top of what I you trying to find - a basic but vital piece of information which is NEVER prominently displayed. In my view commercial sites are made as amateurish and obnoxious as possible to encourage you to press the 'buy' button ASAP just to make the torture end! All this after swallowing multi-megabytes of you data plan you are paying for!

If you have a software firewall, Gopher uses TCP port 70.

Gemini is a newer protocol (2019). It has many modern features including the use of TLS. But if you like to read in peace - as in a library - as opposed to a cassino - it is a good place. It is a gentleman's network. Even pictures do not load inline (you need to request them) and this will use very little of your date plan while loading quickly even on the cheapest in flight Wi-Fi provided by Virgin Atlantic - they are both designed with efficiency in mind. Even Google Chat does not work on Virgin Atlantic's cheapest in flight Wi-Fi - but Gopher and Gemini both do!

If you have a software firewall, Gemini uses TCP port 1965.

However, both need a dedicated client (I recommend Lagrange - available for all operating systems except IOS (Windows, Linux, Macintosh and Android). It supports both Gopher and Gemini.

I get a lot of traffic to my Gemini service since I launched it in September 2023.

If you do not (yet) have a suitable client, gateways are available. These do allow you to view content with a standard browser, but will not give you the experience of a full client such as Lagrange.

Here are the gateways I have found and tested. Tip: if you have a Gopher or Gemini link you can paste it into the search box, and it will display - if the link is valid.

Gopher:

https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/

So I am at gopher://dfdn.info, and to visit my Gopher site use the link:

gopher://dfdn.info

Gemini:

This allows you to view Gemini sites in a standard web browser. For example mine is at gemini://dfdn.info - the link becomes:

https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/dfdn.info

And for a specific page, use, for example

https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/dfdn.info/justice

to visit gemini://dfdn.info/justice - for example.

David

Gateways for gopher and gemini protocols: these are good to get you started. But I would recommend using a dedicated client in longer term. Of course, I take you to my server directly, but this aims to get you started.

***Until you have a client to access my gopher site directly***, use this proxy to read in web browser. A dedicated client will be faster and look better.