If Gemini is a bicycle, the web is a bus

Ploum compared the web to a car and Gemini to a bicycle.

Maybe the web is more like a bus.

Operators have special training

Repair is a 🐝

Owned by large companies with several buses and employees

Passengers get subject to ads and have to follow along a particular route

This analogy also shows us where Gemini could still learn and improve.

Like a bike, you need to learn to do some tricky stuff just in order to even participate

Like a bike, you are out alone in the rain and wind and can get into car accident (as in: you can get hacked, as the security issues and breaches on Gemini show)

On a bus you can just hop on. You don’t have to do it yourself.

Dropping the analogy for a bit.

Nerds know how to:

Self-host (install and maintain a server) or find a host

Write posts in an editor like vi or emacs

Upload gmi files with an app like rsync (and a corresponding receiver app on the server, like sshd)

Register with something like Spacewalk, Capcom, Comitium, Station, and/or Antenna

Those things are needed to contribute on Gemini.

Maybe there could be a more integrated and user-friendly app? I vaguely remember the “blogging apps” from the early 00s. Maybe it could do both editing and transfer? And work with come with the user’s choice of:

a recommended, easy to install self-hosting setup (for your VPS or an always-on home computer),

integrating with any sshd/rsyncable, gem server readable location (so it only replaces the editor/rsync half of the equation), or

integrating with existing hosting sites like srht pages, Flounder, Midnight Pub etc (for those who know and have absolutely nothing).

People love apps; I’m gonna continue using my beloved combo of rsync, emacs, and Molly Brown, but those apps are like bikes: nerds only!

That’s great but I also wanna read what some none-nerds have to say.

(And I know about (and appreciate) the existence of webapps like Flounder and Midnight Pub but it’s a li’l bit ironic to need to use the web to write on Gemini.)

Drew was right when he said that Gemini is “read only”. Only way to write is through other protocols like ssh, ftps, https, titan, or spartan, or painstakingly one sentence at a time with get requests, or writing directly on the server itself.

Makes me feel like Gemini is more like a unicycle. Great to watch but difficult to do yourself.

New people, read this next part

None of this is to gatekeep or dissuade you from learning to post to Gemini. You can use Flounder or Midnight Pub via the web, or learn how to use shrt.site (which also uploads over https).

I know that when I’m ranting & raving (uh, I mean “musing and pondering”) to other nerds about “this stuff is too difficult and it prevents people from participating”, it also unintentionally comes across as “hey newcomers, you’ve been right to be scared, it is difficult”, and that’s 1000% not my intention. Difficult does not mean impossible.

And, learning the hard way has been a fun hobby for many. You might end up actually liking it a lot. I’ve been doing this since the mid nineties (starting out with Notepad and ftp and a noisy modem) and Gemini is a stripped down, simplified version of what we were dealing with back then.