2021-08-17Genre: ArticlesTildeverse
A decentralized collection of like-minded social Unix communities.
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Tildeverse is a free and open association of like minded tilde (~) communities. Tildes are pubnixes - (Public Access Unix Systems) inspired by tilde.club which was created by Paul Ford in 2014. These are very useful to those who want to learn about *nix (GNU/Linux, Unix, BSD, etc) systems.
It's name is a combination of 'Tilde ()' and 'Universe'. Here, Tilde means 'Home' because () is a sign that represents the home directory in *nix systems.
Pubnixes - (Public Access Unix Systems) in simple terms are computers across the world that can be accessed via the internet. These computer run *nix operating systems and are accessed using Secure Shell (SSH).
People Can Use It To :
Build Webpages
People can create their own websites for free. Most tildes provide a folder where you can create and store a .html file which automatically becomes a website ( Domain is determined by respective tilde communities where you signed up. ) and can be instantly viewed it by going to the assigned web address.
Build Gemini Capsules
Like normal websites Gemini capsules also are "websites" on a different protocol called Gemini. People can host their Gemini Capsules like they can host websites. Tildes provide a folder where you can create and store a .gmi file which automatically becomes a capsule and can be instantly viewed by going to the assigned gemini address.
Build Gopher Holes
Like gemini capsules gopher holes also are "websites" on a different protocol called Gopher. People can host their Gopher Holes like they can host websites. Tildes provide a folder where you can create and store a text file which automatically becomes a gopher hole and can be instantly viewed by going to the assigned gopher address.
Learn to use nix*
More than 70 percentage of people in the world are using Windows as their OS and many don't even know what an OS is, these computers on the other hand runs nix*. Nix* includes operating systems like GNU/Linux, BSD, Unix etc. These are generally used in servers; most of the servers runs GNU/Linux. People can learn to navigate between files and folders and use terminal based applications provided by the tildes helping to grasp how *nix is designed and organized.
Write Software
Tildes provide people with a suite of programs by which they can write software and learn. People can write code in Vim as well as Nano if preferred. They can ask the administrator to install specific programs of their tilde doesn't have one.
Play TUI games
TUI stands for Text User Interface; like GUI - Graphical User Interface. Since It doesn't have a GUI, people are limited to the games that are made for TUI and also to the games that are provided respective tilde. One of the common games on tildes is 'botany' where people grow a plant, water it, crossbreed it, exchange seeds with friends etc.
Conduct Shows
You can even conduct web radio shows ( AzuraCast Streams ) on tildes, particularly on tilderadio.org if you are interested in it.
Use Tilde Services and Projects
Services like tilde-chat, tilde-git, tilde-radio, mastodon, writefreely, minecraft, tilde-news,tildeverse jitsi, tildeverse mumble etc are available to use for tilde users to communicate and interact with each other. For more info about services go to : Tildeverse
- Basically, It is a unified hub of decentralized services and pubnixes where people can use their nerdy programs, do their nerdy works, interact with similar nerdy peoples having fun and learning.
Difference Between Tildes
Services like Emails, NNTP, PHP etc are offered by limited tildes. For example, ~town does not offer email at all (only internal mail), cosmic could only send/receive emails in Tildeverse. NNTP service is only natively offered by ~club,
team, cosmic, and your.Softwares like weechat, botany, etc are available in limited tildes. This is also determined by the operating system used in them.
Different tildes use different Operating Systems that determine the shell, applications, usability etc.
Tildes are located all over the world, so there is also a difference of geographical location where a certain tilde is located.
Tildes have their own specific themes, cosmic.voyage have a science fiction based theme, breadcrumb have a baker kind of theme, etc.
Particular tildes have particular objectives and specific tasks like ~radio, ~chat, etc.
~team provides XMPP service that bridges to ~chat and envs.net do Matrix bridging.
Why nix* though ?
This section from Paul Ford's essay about tildeverse explains :
Your typical "cloud" Unix server, designed in the 1970s to be a very social place, is today a ghost town with one or two factories still clanking in the town square - factories that receive our email, or accept our Instagram photos and store them, and manage our data. But there's no one walking around and chatting downtown.
Thus when people talk about "cloud computing" they are talking about millions of tiny ghost towns. Ironic, because what do people build on these ghost towns but social networks.
In the last decade, social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook - even Google Plus appeared. They tried to bring all those lonesome folks back together, into one enormous room. Not just a few dozen people on one computer but millions, even a billion people all sharing one giant meta-computer. Many of those services make very heavy use of Unix under the hood. So: We collectively took a very social computing platform, papered over its social parts, and used it to build a social computing platform.
Purely for kicks, I decided to turn the social part back on and throw a nerd party.