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# Gopher
Gopher is a network [protocol](protocol.md) for publishing, browsing and downloading files and is known as a much simpler alternative to the [World Wide Web](www.md) (i.e. to [HTTP](http.md) and [HTML](html.md)). In fact it competed with the Web in its early days and even though the Web won in the mainstream, gopher still remains used by a small community. Gopher is like the Web but well designed, it is the [suckless](suckless.md)/[KISS](kiss.md) way of doing what the Web does, it contains practically no [bloat](bloat.md) and so [we](lrs.md) highly advocate its use. Gopher inspired creation of [Gemini](gemini.md), a similar but bit more complex and "[modern](modern.md)" protocol, and the two together have recently become the main part of so called [Smol Internet](smol_internet.md).
Gopher is a network [protocol](protocol.md) for publishing, browsing and downloading files and is known as a much simpler alternative to the [World Wide Web](www.md) (i.e. to [HTTP](http.md) and [HTML](html.md)). In fact it competed with the Web in its early days and even though the Web won in the mainstream, gopher still remains used by a small communities (however the more dedicated, see e.g. [bitreich](bitreich.md)). Gopher is like the Web but well designed, it is the [suckless](suckless.md)/[KISS](kiss.md) way of doing what the Web does, it contains practically no [bloat](bloat.md) and so [we](lrs.md) highly advocate its use. Gopher inspired creation of [Gemini](gemini.md), a similar but bit more complex and "[modern](modern.md)" protocol, and the two together have recently become the main part of so called [Smol Internet](smol_internet.md). Gopher is much better than Gemini though.
As of 2022 the Veronica search engine reported 343 gopher servers in the world with 5+ million indexed selectors.
As of 2022 the Veronica search engine reported 343 gopher servers in the world with 5+ million indexed selectors. As of 2023 the Gopher LAWN directory (made by [bitreich](bitreich.md)) contains 281 selected quality gopher holes.
Gopher **doesn't use any [encryption](encryption.md)**. This is good, encryption is [bloat](bloat.md). Gopher also **only uses [ASCII](ascii.md)**, i.e. there's no [Unicode](unicode.md). That's also good, Unicode is bloat (and mostly serves trannies to insert emojis of pregnant men into readmes, we don't need that). Gopher simple design is intentional, the authors deemed simplicity a good feature. Gopher is so simple that you may very well write your own client and server and comfortably use them (it is also practically possible to browse gopher without a specialized client, just with standard [Unix](unix.md) [CLI](cli.md) tools).
@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ Gopher is just an [application layer](l7.md) [protocol](protocol.md) (officially
**Gopher [software](software.md)**: sadly "[modern](modern.md)" browsers are so modern they have millions of lines of code but can't be bothered to support such a trivial protocol like gopher, however there are Web proxies you can use to explore gopherspace. Better browsers such as [lynx](lynx.md) (terminal) or [forg](forg.md) ([GUI](gui.md)) can be used for browsing gopherspace natively. As a server you may use e.g. Gophernicus (used by [SDF](sdf.md)) or search for another one, there are dozens. For the creation of gophermaps you simply use a plaintext editor. **Where to host gopher?** [Pubnixes](pubnix.md) such as [SDF](sdf.md), [tilde.town](tilde_town.md) and [Circumlunar community](circumlunar.md) offer gopher hosting but many people simply [self-host](self_hosting.md) servers e.g. on [Raspberry Pis](rpi.md), it's pretty simple.
**Some basic/interesting gopher links**: gopher://bitreich.org/1/lawn (directory of gopher holes), gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/7/v2/vs (search engine), gopher://circumlunar.space:70/1 (circumlunar space), gopher://gopherpedia.com ([Wikipedia](wikipedia.md) on gopher), ...
## How To
For now take a look at stuff in this repo: `git clone git://bitreich.org/gopher-tutorials/`.