== 2026-08-22 Sunday ==

I installed Devuan Linux on an old Samsung Netbook (Model N150+)
yesterday.

My plan was to use it as a simple console-mode *nix box, with
limited screen size, text only and simple network tools. I want to
see how life is from the perspective of a terminal screen.

Initially I wanted to experience Gopher space the way it was "back
in the day" and read phlogs etc. on screens that won't "accomodate
any line length" etc.


-------------8<--------aside--------------------------------------
[ And despite what /some/ people might think, I still find the UMN
Gopher client to be acceptable for most things, and see no reason
to use a more "modern" one, just so that I can read pages that
are created with no thought for the potential reader... you know
the ones - the "gophermap as web-page blog post" style.... ]
------------->8---------------------------------------------------

=== 1993 ===

While deciding what packages to install (or remove) I've been
wondering about how things were on the internet back in 1993, when
Gopher was at its peak and the WWW was just about to hit the big
time. 

In 1993... 

I was 27 years old.
I was married.
We owned a house.
We owned a dog.
I'd graduated with an Honours Degree in Physics in 1988.
I'd been working as a Broadcast Transmitter Engineer for 5 years.

I'd never seen the internet. 
I didn't own a computer. 
I didn't use one at work.
I didn't own a mobile phone.
I did use one at work, the on-call engineer had the "callout
phone" and a pager. We saw no need of a personal mobile phone.
 

Computers (or mobile phones) were not the ubiquitous things they
are today.

But I remember my early days of Linux in around 1999. It was much
simpler. And more enjoyable. 


This netbook is going to be my way of recreating life on the
internet back in the heyday of Gopher....

==== Project "Back to 1993" ====

= SSH =

I found that SSH didn't appear until 1995, and OpenSSH appeared in
1999.

So my 1993-Netbook hasn't got SSH.

= Telnet & FTP = 

Telent and FTP were still the dominant remote-shell, and file
transfer protocols. 

So my 1993-Netbook has got telnet and ftp.

And all the Linux & *BSD boxes on my home LAN have telnet servers
and ftp servers so that I can log in and move files around.

= NNTP = 

Usenet was a major part of online culture.

So my 1993-Netbook has slrn, and I've got an account at Eternal
September. And I read Usenet news again. Or what's left of it.

= IRC = 

IRC was quite big in 1993.

So my 1993-Netbook will probably get a console-mode IRC client
soon. I've used irssi in the past, but to be honest I've never been
a big IRC user, so it'll be a steep learning curve.

= Email = 

Email was a thing then. It's still a thing now. Pine first appeared
in 1992 and I've used it extensively in the past, and I've been
using its successor Alpine for the last few years.

So my 1993-Netbook has the Alpine email client.

= Web Browser = 

The WWW was in its infancy. Lynx first appeared in 1992. I've used
it occasionally over the years - although in recent years it's been
difficult to find websites that are pleasant to read using Lynx.
Often they are impossible to read at all. But Lynx can still render
some things ok. And it does well with Gopher.

So my 1993-Netbook has Lynx.

= Gopher = 

And then there's Gopher. 

It was at its peak in 1993. 

I have UMN Gopher which is still usable on most of the current
Gopher space. But not all of it. Not because modern servers don't
follow the correct protocol. It's because modern users twist the
protocol. Bend it out of shape in the name of "Progress" and
"Indiviual Freedom". Yes, you're free to do anything you choose.
But I'm free to ignore it if it's not readable on the original
standards-compliant Gopher client. 

If you want inline-clickable-hyperlinks.... use HTML or use
Gemini...

So my 1993-Netbook has UMN Gopher. It also has some more recent
gopher clients. 

Perhaps I'll delete them?

I don't use 1993 versions of these various applications. I'm using
the modern, current "safe" versions. But so far everything I use
was available back in 1993.

The one outlier is that I'm using tmux which appeared in 2007. I
see that GNU Screen dates back to 1987, and I used screen a lot,
before tmux came along. 

Perhaps I'll migrate back to screen?

Oh, and I see that Nano first appeared in 1999, but was modelled on
Pico - the editor I've used for years in Pine and Alpine. Pico
appeared in 1989. So, perhaps I'll pretend that nano is just a
later incarnation of Pico?

Any other "legacy" applications I should be aware of?