amfora VS agate

Gemini is a joke. The main proponents like Drew Devault chuck a tantrum when browsers allow users to optionally show favicons https://github.com/makew0rld/amfora/issues/199

https://github.com/makew0rld/amfora/issues/199

You'll need a different web browser since Firefox and Chrome based Browsers all only support HTTP/HTTPS afaik. I suggest using deedum if you're on Android, if you're on windows I suggest installing this browser, it's a more or less simple graphical Browser written in C# so it should work. Just download the release zip and extract, you can probably go from there., if you're on Linux, I suggest Amfora it's a text based browser but it has served me well.

And that's the caveat with SourceHut and the current discussion around it. While I respect Drew and his work, he isn't exactly the most approachable person in OSS.

If you and several other people happen to have a hard requirement for a specific feature that he (or his buddy Simon) don't see fit for, you won't get that feature, even if you volunteer to implement and maintain it. The only thing you're left with is basically to fork SourceHut, host it yourself and maintain your feature all by yourself, dealing with continuously patching a very much still-in-development (and therefore ever changing) software. That is something you're probably not going to do, especially considering SourceHut's architecture and way of doing things.

SourceHut isn't exactly extensible/pluggable and hosting it as a one man show or even a small company becomes a huge PITA, as soon as you diverge from the holy grail that is Drew's way of doing things (Alpine, no containers, no good config management, no easy way to scale things, and the dedication to invest your blood and tears into maintaining this thing).

Hence I really cannot comprehend the current trend that is "let's all dump GitHub for this, and that, and SourceHut". So far, SourceHut really hasn't made an effort to prove itself worthy of the influx of OSS projects. And while I do see Drew commenting here, reassuring folks he won't ban anyone over any internet disagreement, reading the public mailing lists of the SourceHut repos doesn't really show much of a welcoming behavior either. I mean, he's the person behind what has become one of the most popular Gemini servers, and as soon as that was the case, he began threatening client apps to arbitrary block them for doing things that don't align with his values (in this case, [showing a favicon](https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora/issues/19...)). And the cabal of elite internet Amish, that have been on SourceHut since its early days and that makes a large portion of the platform, aren't that different either.

I do agree with GitHub being the wrong place for OSS projects, but I don't agree with SourceHut being the right one. At least for as long as it doesn't become obvious that its founder and the community around him has changed and started to genuinely appreciate people for the work they're doing, regardless of their own ideological beliefs.

I use Sway and I pay to host my code on SourceHut. I admire Drew and I think he is making invaluable contributions to FOSS.

That said, he has a history of... rash? impulsive? reactions to situations that might have been resolved with less bad blood if he had stepped away from the keyboard until he was less upset. The classic example is when he got upset about people wanting to unofficially add favicons to the Gemini protocol, and he threatened to blackhole any IP address which requests a favicon. https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora/issues/19...

I do not know if there is some specific recent event triggering vitriol, but the way this post is written, it sounds like Drew thinks it is resulting from less recent actions like the favicon threat.

In Drew's defense, he has made (limited) apologies and I do believe he is trying to do better. https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas... has a note at the bottom, saying:

> I realize that my blog has been a source of a lot of negativity in the past, and I regret how harsh I've been with some of the projects I've criticised. I will make my arguments by example going forward: if I think we can do better, I'll do it better, instead of criticising those who are just earnestly trying their best.

But it is also true that many people will not be quick to forgive him, and some people never will. It will take him time to undo the negative image he has created with some people, but after seeing Linus Torvald's positive changes, I am optimistic that Drew can change for the better if he wants to, and help create a welcoming community for everyone. If he doesn't give up first.

amfora gemini client

Should be able to run a basic gemini client just fine, maybe even amfora?

I tried using agate, and got it running on my machine, but I couldn't connect to it through my client. Since I want to use an HTTP proxy, I gave up on that and tried to install twins, but I couldn't wrap my head around how to write the configuration file, the docs are pretty unclear.

After learning about the protocol and playing around with Amfora and Lagrange on Linux I stared down the path of looking into servers to host my own capsule. I've tried MollyBrown and Agate. However, of the two MollyBrown was much simpler to setup. I have a working Docker configuration for Agate too, but in trying to use my own generated certificate I've not gotten it to work. Agate expects certificates to be in a DER format and converting my personally generated key & cert from PEM to DER format doesn't work. When I spin up agate it only works when I have agate auto generate a new certificate when starting, but this is not ideal for docker since it's expected for containers to be disposable. My other reason for going with MollyBrown is because of the support for client certificate authentication. So far as I can tell, either agate doesn't allow for client certs or I'm just not at the point where I understand agate enough to know how to configure them.

This tutorial will focus on using the simple Agate software to host your own Gemini capsule. There is a plethora of software to host your content, but I have found Agate to be simple and sufficient for my purposes. A collection of all things Gemini can be found here, which includes a list of server software. Let's get started.

Oh, hi! Original author of Agate here.

The code in Agate is a bit weird, because it started as a 100-line toy server I wrote as a weekend experiment. A lot of the early code was optimized for conciseness rather than maintainability. It also had various micro-optimizations that were probably totally unnecessary, just because my idea of fun involves minimizing allocations and copying everywhere.

As other people started actually using the code, and submitting feature requests and patches, I mostly gave up on minimalism as a goal, so the newer code is more focused on maintainability, but it's mixed together with the old code.

My favorite thing about this project is that, as the community grew beyond my own motivation to manage it, the most active contributor @Johann150 stepped up to become the lead maintainer [1], and has done a great job!

[1]: https://github.com/mbrubeck/agate/issues/6