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The idea of **Friendly Computers** is one that I have had for a very
long time. I have been very worried about the level of understanding
that people have about computers. It is my belief that the level of
computer literacy in my community that people have is far too low. I
wanted to do something about that, so I created **Friendly
Computers**.
This small business of mine aims to be very humble. I do not want fame
or riches. All I want to do is provide reliable and safe
computers at a very low cost, and provide computer literacy lessons.
I ask people in my community to donate unwanted computers to me, which
I refurbish and repair, and then repurpose to new homes at a nominal
fee. Many of these computers are old, but given the state of software
technology these days, this is no problem. I can make old computers
run fast again. I can do this because the bedrock, or fundamental
software--the "operating system"--that I install on my **Friendly
Computers** is called "Free Software", or "Open Source Software".
*Software Freedom* follows a very simple philosophy.
It aims to respect the freedom of the computer user.
The Free Software Foundation defines free software as:
“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and
community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run,
copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
The operating systems that large industrial corporations (like
Microsoft and Apple) sell are *not* free software. I like to think of
their software products as like a "black box": you are permitted to
use their software if you purchase it, but they will not tell you how
it works, or how you yourself can change it, and, sometimes, even
configure it.
The point of software freedom is that you should be able to
interrogate your computer's inner workings, to whatever level of
mastery you feel comfortable. 'Free' software may be sold for
money--like Microsoft's or Apple's, I suppose--but the fundamental
difference is that its blueprints (the 'source code') must also be
given along with the product.
It is, however, common practice to provide 'free' software at no cost,
and this is what I do. All the software that you will be able to
access on a *Friendly Computer* will cost you nothing. This is a great
benefit, and will save you a lot of time and money.
I am able to do this because the software freedom movement is made up
of tens of thousands of volunteers, software engineers, and technical
writers. You are benefiting from the hard--and frequently unpaid--work
that so many of us do in order to make sure that computers remain
friendly, and not scary and dangerous.
Gemini Universal Search (GUS) is a search engine for content served
over the Gemini Protocol. It provides both a search interface, so you
can look for content by keywords, content types, content sizes within
the smolnet. It also provides data on the size and characteristics of
Geminispace itself.
~KACZYNSKI.LIFE is powered by GUS, an open-source crawler & search
engine made by Natalie Pendragon and contributors. The source code is
available at the following forges:
source & mailinglist on sourcehut
~KACZYNSKI.LIFE runs in a small community data centre in Perth, Western Australia.
If you'd like to help keep Friendly Computers hardware running feel
free to donate a few bucks. Any donation will be directly used for
server costs, and hardware maintenance.
This instance of GUS is constantly crawling, and updates its new index
every 30 minutes.
You can reach out to us by email, matrix, and the fediverse.
https://awkward.company/@vidak
https://awkward.company/@ZoDoneRightNow
I've you prefer direct personal contact feel free to use the link below instead:
mailto:friendlycomputers@riseup.net
Gemini is an application-level internet protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which facilitates linking between files. It's been described as both "the web, stripped right back to its essence" as well as "Gopher, souped up and modernised a little".
If you want to learn more, you should head over to the Gemini Project site itself!
For more extensive documentation about how GUS works, please see the
documentation pages.