💾 Archived View for problemfox.pollux.casa › gemlog › 2024-08-23_SMOL_success.gmi captured on 2024-08-25 at 00:01:01. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I'm still smiling at my SMOL success. I've had a Raspberry Pi for a dozen years, and have been online for almost thirty, but it took discovering the SMOLweb and the Gemini Protocol to finally spin up my own server and launch my own capsule.
Where self-hosting even a single simple page of plain HTML seems to require installing a bundle of software, an age of configuration, a deep understanding of arcane networking knowledge launching my capsule was a breeze. Sure, it took me a couple of hours and a bit of trial and error but most of that was down to me forgetting most of the basics of Unix in the last fifteen years. Once I'd untangled my users and permissions it was just a matter of getting it running, and then setting it to restart automatically on reboot.
Why is this keeping me smiling so long, because of that dazzling simplicity. It reminds me of how I hoped the internet would be as a teenager. Pages of text that anyone could make and share at home with very little outlay. No megacorporations, no complex dependencies, no tracking and monitoring. The whole thing came together from parts I had tucked in my junk drawer and I Pi I purchased for $20 when they first launched. In our modern world of bloated operating systems and memory hungry applications the fact the Pi still ran impressed me, the fact it could send messages to the world is even more impressive.
So what next? Well, I'm definitely staying here on Pollux.Casa as my main capsule, as Adële knows far more about server administration and security than I do. Also, my self-hosted capsule is strictly experimental, balanced precariously next to the record player on a shelf in the living room with ethernet and powercables dangling down the front of the shelves.
But I'm still grinning every time I check the URL!