I am enamored with the idea of SDF, and I think it is an important part of computing history and the present. That being said, I am curious as to whether anyone actually finds it useful—aside from the fact that it hosts the instance!!
For me, SDF is a refuge. It’s a part of the Old Internet where I can go and just enjoy a shell account for its own sake. Usenet, email, and a simple web page. Now with mastodon and lemmy, I feel like I’m contributing to a better Internet of the future while preserving and honoring the technology that started it all.
My first SDF account was created in 2004 (possibly before). In economic terms, the SDF services I enjoy with my sustaining membership have no equal. You’d be hard pressed to assemble the same portfolio of services from corporate providers-- ad-free, nag-free, no user productization-- for the same price.
But that’s superficial. While I certainly enjoy the services that SDF provides, the community is what sets it apart. I’ve been here, and am still here, because of the community-- even if I’ve been quiet until recently. We’re all a bunch of geeks of x, y, or z. Whenever I venture into com, I feel a sense of belonging. When I skim the local SDF fediverse feeds, I feel the same way.
SDF’s banner offering is its community. Cheers, SDF!
The mission statement is so simple:
-=- a community platform for inspiring, facilitating and implementing new ideas -=-
Mostly these days as a community and also a web presence. Through the years I’ve used it for many things: file storage, places to practice coding or run builds on other systems, a place to learn, gopher, a VoIP provider, a VPS provider, DNS host, blogging service, mail+usenet service, games, mailing lists, VPN, and a bunch of other stuff I’m sure I forgot.
I’ve been a member verifiably for 20 years (see my uinfo) but I’ve been around for longer than that. Probably closer to 25. It’s always just sort of been an extension to my computing. My membership has waxed and waned but there was rarely a time when I wasn’t donating at some level.
I find I don’t rely on services on SDF for critical stuff because sometimes they go down for extended periods of time or they go neglected. I do, however, appreciate the hell out of it.
That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing. I’m particularly interested in hearing about your experiences using VoIP. Could you tell me more?
OpenVoIP on anonradio is fun. Dial into a party line extension on the air.
SDFers can get access to a SIP extension. I think it’s enabled by way of the maint command from the shell. From there, you can use a softphone like linfone to communicate with other SDFers.
The SDF VoIP service is also connected to the C*NET telephone collectors gateway and you can dial around to explore that network.
I paid for a DID for a while and connected to that with a grandstream DECT base station with a few wireless phones as well as a grandstream ATA and an old western digital phone. For a long time that was the only phone service in my home.
Look at the join and tutorials pages on sdf.org for all sorts of other info. There’s countless services on the fortress. Some old, some new, all in various states of maintenance. Keep digging. You’ll find some cool stuff.
This is awesome. I’m going to try some of that voip stuff.
I currently run my landlines at home over SDF VOIP. Now that I can get a local number I’m going to add on a DID. Currently I dial the main switch board and punch in my SDF ext to call home. I love how I can sign up for so many diverse offerings in one awesome community.
Exploring! SDF is like the coalition of servers I ran in college with friends and campus friendlies. A little of it was explicitly practical, some of it unstable, all of it educational and fun and sometimes stuff took off. I love that SDF survives, and I love that they have paying members.
When new or esoteric stuff hits, whether it’s 9front or the latest fedi service, SDF is where to see if it makes sense for you. Sure there’s home labs, but a home lab doesn’t have the community around it that we have here on SDF, which means it doesn’t give you the sense of how a service runs at scale or in the (sometimes positive, sometimes corrupting, but always informative) presence of others.
I can’t say it better than this post. Only thing I’ll add is it’s often just nice to have a shell on a machine outside of one’s usual machines for debugging.
SDF was the first legitimately obtained shell I had that wasn’t tied to my ISP.
I appreciate the retro computing functionality a lot (comm, bboard, etc), it’s just fun to dive back into TUI land for a bit.
I have my own boxes for small scale stuff, but for stuff like Lemmy or Mastodon I prefer something with a community base.
I point newbs that want to learn more advanced computer stuff at SDF as a resource as well.
Mostly I just like what SDF does and what they “stand for”.
I mostly use it for my website and gopher space, thought it’s nice to have a trustworthy instance to use as a home base in the fediverse.
So true. Picking SDF for my Lemmy account was a no-brainer.
I am way younger than you guys at 29 (Although I feel old now, I feel I cant change my life direction because of it, but… meh), but I use it for messing around with a large shared server. As odd as that sounds. Its fun being a limited user on a server that is being used in the same way by a bunch of people at the same time.
As for what is it actively doing? It hosts a meme website built with iframes for nostalgia. Thats about it. I might mess around with the other paid features at some point. I find using something shared like this a lot of fun, even though I rarely interact with others.
I’m 23 and currently don’t use SDF but heard it’s a Lemmy host. If any site is gonna stick around, it’s this one.
I am way younger than you guys at 29
I am 17.
Anyway, what’s the website?
I’ve kind of lurked around SDF since the mid 90s. (My first time on IRC was via SDF!) I keep meaning to participate more in the community, but my ADHD seems to give me a lack of object permanence with communities 😅
Either way, I’m glad to be reminded periodically that SDF still exists and I ponied up for a membership a few years back. The shell account comes in handy, occasionally. Glad to see new services pop up from SDF. Happy to see things still trucking along!
SDF was my first Unix experience. I logged in using telnet from my Win98 computer back in the early 2000s.
Lately, mastodon (and now lemmy!). It’s also been super handy as a “swiss army knife” unix system. Need to test access outside my network? ssd -D to sdf. Need to copy files between two systems that would normally be a PITA? scp to and from sdf! Also nice to have access to a bsd machine since everything I personally run is Linux.
I’ve also used it in the past for Plan 9 learning and a couple other random things here and there.
I used SDF for pretty much everything for a while: usenet, email, shell, and hosted my gopher site here (until I deleted it a year or two ago). These days I’m mostly on SDF’s Mastodon instance and (occasionally) Pixelfed.
Hey, I remember reading your gopher posts. Thanks for writing.
Thanks. Trying to find the inspiration to start again.
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Thanks. I’ve started up again, been too long!
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I will, once I’ve truly committed to writing more often. 😊
Back in the days, I used the SDF free unix shell, which helped me alot to learn more about UNIX basics, and motivated me to iterate my first franken-homelab with bits of old laptops and desktops. If I’m an happy sysadmin nowadays, it’s part thanks to SDF.
Then with a bunch of good friends we started our non-profit ISP (circa 2010) and diversified the services we offer to our users (VPS, VPNs, shells, Wiki, BBB, “cloud” (ahem) storage, monthly tutorials and workshops…). Nowadays we have half a rack of servers, and, home-side, my homelab grew (although it’s still a franken-lab with NUCs, old desktops and one “real” server). Once again, thanks to SDF for igniting the spark which gave us the will to start our own community of kind and pasionnate people.
With the current reddit debacle, although I don’t use SDF services nowadays, I was happy to see that SDF hosts a lemmy instance, because I know the values of the SDF community. So, thank you - again - SDF!
I just joined tonight so I’m not fully understanding what SDF is all about at this point and what I can do with it.
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