Slashdot Mirror

Veronica-2 is back. And Floodgap is still alive any kicking. And just in case you want to be a weirdo, you can serve up your WordPress over Gopher.

Perhaps the nicest stand-alone Gopher client is Little Gopher Client. It's open source and multi-platform, if you're into Pascal/Delphi programming.

Veronica-2 is back. And Floodgap is still alive any kicking. And just in case you want to be a weirdo, you can serve up your WordPress over Gopher.

Perhaps the nicest stand-alone Gopher client is Little Gopher Client. It's open source and multi-platform, if you're into Pascal/Delphi programming.

Floodgap Gopher proxy is still alive and kicking. And even Veronica-2 is quite usable. There are a few folks who publish their blogs on Gopher (as well as HTTP). And in a weird way the structure of Gopher makes a lot of sense for blog/journal content. (I don't blog, but I'd like to if I could be motivated to write about something)

Floodgap Gopher proxy is still alive and kicking. And even Veronica-2 is quite usable. There are a few folks who publish their blogs on Gopher (as well as HTTP). And in a weird way the structure of Gopher makes a lot of sense for blog/journal content. (I don't blog, but I'd like to if I could be motivated to write about something)

It was pretty easy, especially considering that many of us had access through a 2400 bps modem (we called them 2400 baud, but I think they were 600 baud technically). Most of what you needed to find over Gopher was text files, which made things like troff/nroff very handy for formatting text files very nicely on terminals.

Is the new technology more powerful and flexible? Without a doubt. On the other hand I didn't need an ad blocker back in those days. And people weren't remote exploiting my out-of-date gopher client, or running bitcoin mining tasks in the background on 286. One valid point about nostolgia is that sometimes the old days were simpler and safer, if harder.

Are you CRAZY? Usenet isn't secure at all. Gopher is where it's at!

I think that Apple's engineering staff is not sufficiently resourced to "value stream" their designs to fail just after warranty - some stuff (like the iPad 1 physical case and screen) is bulletproof, but later iPads have gotten more and more fragile, even as they advertise using stronger materials. But, they did manage to kill the iPad 1 with OS upgrades.

I also have a pre-Intel (was that G5?) MacMini that "works as well as it ever did", but again the software has left it in the dust, kids run TuxPaint on it just fine, but it can't browse the modern internet.

So, summing up my experience of the last decade or so: 3 computers have lasted forever, but become useless due to inadequate processor/RAM/etc., a notebook, and several iPad minis have died due to weak hardware design, and a couple of intel generation mac minis are still spinning strong - but they're roughly equivalent to double-priced intel NUCs...

The PowerPC minis were G4, not G5.

Try TenFourFox for a more modern Browser. It works a treat, and even has Altivec acceleration! About the only thing that it doesn't support is Flash past the last PPC version Adobe released (10.1, IIRC) (unless they've added that, too).

Oh, but wait! Someone updated Flash Player for PPC to version 16.1!!!

No, Gopher is still very much around

I suggest https://www.webcrawler.com/ or Altavista or even gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1...

Makes me miss gopher clients. Maybe we should go back.

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1

That's an actual gopher link, you'll need something like lynx or the OverbiteFF extension to use it.

The internet has become an intertwined collection of hugboxes, propaganda outlets, and viral marketing solutions, all held together by increasingly valueless data mining operations.

Hi. There are no cookies : http://gopher.floodgap.com/ove...

http://www.floodgap.com/softwa... and you're welcome. ;)

Why would there be any question that Chromium could still be compiled for 32-bit CPUs? It it's open-source, it can be. The only question is whether anyone cares enough to do it.

The Firefox devs walked away from PPC processors some time ago, but there's enough interest in that platform that an independent fork of its code has been maintained.

http://gopher.floodgap.com/gop...

That has an http to gopher proxy, and is the home of OverbiteFF which is a Firefox extension that adds gopher support back to it. First "met" floodgap and OverbiteFF's owner/creator back on comp.sys.cbm.

So is gopher.quux.org now the only gopher server left in the entire universe?

No.

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1...

http://gopher.floodgap.com/gop...

That has an http to gopher proxy, and is the home of OverbiteFF which is a Firefox extension that adds gopher support back to it. First "met" floodgap and OverbiteFF's owner/creator back on comp.sys.cbm.

So is gopher.quux.org now the only gopher server left in the entire universe?

No.

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1...

I recommend you look up "Ten4fox". It provides stable ESR releases of firefox, even ESR 24 (the current one), for PPC's on 10.4 and 10.5. It will even run (slowly) in rosetta in 10.6, but that is not recommended.

http://www.floodgap.com/softwa...

I think you're missing the point, really?

Apple, historically, supports the current OS X and 2 versions back from it. Beyond that, it's unsupported by them. But they don't publish official "end of life" dates for OS X like Microsoft and others do for their OS's.

The reasoning is that quite a few people can and DO like to keep their old machines around, running older software they've invested in, even if the operating system itself isn't getting patches released for it anymore.

There are still people out there using OS X 10.4 Tiger, and 3rd. party products targeted specifically for them ... such as TenFourFox at http://www.floodgap.com/softwa...

Well, this leads directly to the heart of the Open Source movement. Compare with Firefox: some nice guys at tenfourfox put out PPC versions of every FF update. If the Skype source were available, the same could be done here (at least in theory, if Skype didn't choose to block it at their end).

Just goes to show that the Win32 API is stable compared to say, MacOS X. Even though Mozilla dropped support for 10.4 and 10.5 PowerPC, the TenFourFox project keeps up with Mozilla's changes. Whats missing from Win32 in XP/2K3 that would force Mozilla to drop support in the future? OS X had big changes to font handling in 10.5 and higher, plus that big architecture change.

http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com

Might want to install the OverbiteFF extension for the best experience, otherwise you get that http to gopher proxy.

http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com

Might want to install the OverbiteFF extension for the best experience, otherwise you get that http to gopher proxy.

http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/

Man, the 12" PowerBook G4 is still my favorite computer I've owned. Got about 5 years of full-time use out of it. Good portable form-factor, especially for the time, durable, decent battery life.

I eventually moved on because PPC stopped being treated as a first-class citizen, and things like browsers ended up with a huge performance gap, since the modern JS engines didn't get ported to PPC. And new software stopped being available.

http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

Sure there are ways for an uber-geek to lock it down but because of network effects he'll by default be isolating himself (because most folks he knows won't go to the trouble and nearly all of that stuff requires both ends to be secured) and a good 99.995% won't ever bother so the status quo is maintained.

Yes, but that means we more technical oriented folks haven't done a good enough job of explaining it.

There is a reason why nobody raised a big stink when Moz pulled the plug on TBird,its because download mail has gone the way of Gopher for the vast majority.

Noooooo..... Gopher forever!

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/

Though to tell the truth I got on the net post Gopher.

Perhaps we geeks/nerds haven't done a good enough job of explaining why a real e-mail client is better than accessing e-mail with your web browser.

This would be more of an issue if they had still been supporting PowerPC, since Leopard was the last OS X version for PPC (PPC support ended with 3.6.x.). It seems silly though that they discontinued Leopard support in the version right before the ESR. At least all Intel Macs can upgrade to Snow Leopard, and TenFourFox is keeping PPC on life support for now. Still, Mozilla's discontinuation of Mac platforms is widely disproportionate to their Windows counterparts.

There's tenfour (fork of Firefox) if you want a newer browser on your ppc Mac. http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

I'm sorry, but in June I'm getting 100GB as part of my $36-annually MetaARPA membership over at SDF. Not to mention the UNIX shell account I've been using there for fifteen years. And the private Minecraft server. And Gopher. And dev tools. And VPNs, VPSs, a boatload of other stuff ...

Not to mention I'll be able to mount the SDF 100GB to my Linux box using SSHFS under FUSE.

TenFourFox may be unofficial, but I've been really impressed with its quality and the developer's dedication to fixing issues.

Check out TenFourFox. Current versions of Firefox, compiled for PowerPC Macs.

Why would it? FF4 and later don't support it.

Someone else is doing TenFourFox, a port: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

Because Camino is still based on Mozilla 1.9.2, which is the base of Firefox 3.6 and will probably be EOLed along with it. TenFourFox is a port of Firefox 9 to PPC. It should work.

You can use TenFourFox, which is synched with official Firefox releases and even contains a PPC JIT. But you might want to get rid of those machines sometime soon...

Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (gopher) isn't associated with any program.

Really? Maybe you're just not trying hard enough.

...alive and well!

I used this last week, meaning in 2011 not years ago when it was brand new.

In that case : Tenfourfox (community ppc build of Firefox 4) and of course Firefox 3.6 is still available as a universal (x86 & ppc) binary.

I honestly considered putting a ppc linux on the machine. If the battery was not dead I would have. Too much work to fix it though, stupid Apple sealed laptop design.

What laptop is it, the "non user-upgradable" batteries only came in about 2008 IIRC, with the unibody macs ?

Not only do they not support 98, or 2000, or XP, they also don't support any OS X older than 10.5 (example: Safari and iTunes).

It is simply part of Apple culture not to supply software to older OSes. It forces the user to upgrade (i.e. spend money), and I'm not surprised Apple applies the same tactic to PCs that has worked so well for Macs.

Actually, considering the current version of OS X is 10.6 (Snow Leopard),, it means they should've dropped 10.5 support a long while ago - 2009 or so when 10.6 was released. 10.5 came out in 2007.

Historically, Apple supports the current and last versions of their OS, which is why Safari and iTunes are running on 10.5.

If you've got an Intel Mac, you're good - all Intel Macs are supported by 10.6. If you've got a PowerPC G4 Mac you can run 10.5 and it'll be supported until the end of the year, which would be a stunningly long life for some hardware (over 10 years for the PowerBook G4). But when Lion comes out, all support for the PowerPC line will be dropped as only Lion and Snow Leopard are under official support.

Hell, Firefox stopped supporting 10.4 as of Firefox 4. The only salvation being it's open-source soyou can get TenFourFox which is Firefox 4 built for 10.4.

Anyhow, iTunes stopped supporting Windows 2000 ages ago - I think around iTunes 8 or so, but since Microsoft discontinued support, they dropped the old Windows 2000 link as well.

(Though, the only reason Apple supports 2 versions is lag - the number of people running older OSes drops significantly - when 10.5 came out, the proportion of people running 10.3 was pretty small (most ran 10.4), and likewise, when 10.6 came out, 10.4 were a small minority. Not too small at 10.7 though as it means there will no longer be an OS for PowerPC Macs, which are still a good chunk of users.

The situation is a much worse for iOS users since Apple really only supports the last two versions - iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4, while iPhone/iPhone 3G users are left out in the dust (especially since some are still in contract).

> So, I can't use it. Using OS X 10.4.11 or whatever it is. They support Windows 2000, but not OS X 10.4 :/

The nice thing about open source is if one group doesn't want to support it, then someone else can. What you want now is TenFourFox located here: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

Restores the ability to run on OS X 10.4 PPC and 10.5 PPC, and has extra PPC model specific optimizations as well.

If you're in Mac OS 9 Classilla is a relatively up to date port of Mozilla. I've used it a few times and it's quite nice.

Until a couple years ago iCab was still supported on 68k Macs.

Timberwolf appears to be Firefox for Amigas, granted you probably won't get it running on your 500.

Lynx still runs on pretty much anything if you're willing to compile it, and one can argue it's kept up to date.

In a 'pre-emptive removal of unknown exploits' similar to what Microsoft did when they released IE6. Fortunately the overbite addon exists, but does not seem compatible with recent Beta versions.

Overbite works fine on Firefox 4 Beta 8.

In a 'pre-emptive removal of unknown exploits' similar to what Microsoft did when they released IE6.

Fortunately the overbite addon exists, but does not seem compatible with recent Beta versions.

Anything worth downloading can be found through Veronica.

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/7/v2/vs

There's always Camino, which runs more smoothly than Firefox anyway, and has older builds for Mac OS X 10.3 down to 10.1, and Classilla if you're running Mac OS Classic.

There are more gopher servers online now than there were a few years ago so worth having a peek in gopher://gopher.floodgap.com if you are bored.

Er, how does one Google the gopherspace to find what one is after? :>

Gopher is not installed by default, kiddie...

Gopher is installed by default on most builds of Firefox. Try this in your address bar: gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/1/world

At least upgrade to Mosaic. I'm just disappointed that Google isn't available on Gopher, and I can read ebooks just fine as plain text, this is how we've been doing it for many many years and the format Project Gutenberg started out using. Some people even host their blogs on gopher.

At least upgrade to Mosaic. I'm just disappointed that Google isn't available on Gopher, and I can read ebooks just fine as plain text, this is how we've been doing it for many many years and the format Project Gutenberg started out using. Some people even host their blogs on gopher.

Yep, Mac OS 9.x sucks big time for web browsing. This being said, Classilla is what you want. Netscape Communicator/IE 5/iCab just don't cut it anymore.

Also, I remember having Firefox 1.5 running on Windows 95, and it worked just fine. No problem there, if you compare Windows 95 and Mac OS 7.6 then no question that Windows 95 aged a hell of a lot better, at least when it comes to web browsing. Same for Windows 98 and Mac OS 8.5+.

There is a fairly recent port, but it is also a Mozilla port, as opposed to a Firefox port.

http://www.floodgap.com/software/classilla/

It looks like they basically are trying to update the 6 year old Mozilla for OS 9 with all the updates Mozilla/Firefox has seen since then.

"he was having issues with some third party websites and software "

I'm lucky enough to have a iMac (not using it right now) with OS 9 and IE 5 and the internet is pretty much unusable. Flash doesn't work, so no youtube, and webmail sites like hotmail, gmail and yahoo also do not work. About the only thing that does work is Google and news sites.

However the new Classilla browser might have changed all that. I'll have to dig out the iMac and see how it does.

Then check out gopher...fast without lots of extra cruft. Here's a proxy dialup users can access. If you don't see what you're looking for, e-mail the maintainer and ask for it.

HTTP isn't the only game going...nor is it even the best game in town. Low bandwidth, high S/N ratio sites are out there. You just have to look for them.