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.
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?
SDF was my gateway
drugto Unix, USENET, and mail when I was a teen in the early '90s in Dallas via its getty dialup shells. I owe my career partially to SDF as it prepared me to use Linux (SLS) in its early days and gave me access to USENET to seek help from the community.I haven’t explored any of the other services yet as I was just looking for an escape from Reddit, but it feels comforting going through SDF again for a pipe to discussion forums.
SDF was my first Unix experience. I logged in using telnet from my Win98 computer back in the early 2000s.
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”.
Way back in college, I took a class on systems programming where, because our professor was awesome, we logging in to macs remotely and pretended it was BSD Unix and worked on YACC and stuff. I’d of course used my linux terminal locally, but something about logging in to remote machines (and reading The Cucoo’s egg) was undeniably cool, especially the idea of logging in to one other people also used. I hosted one of my first websites there, discovered and explored gopher, usenet, and of course (mostly lurked) the bboard.
When I was graduating from college, I realized that I would soon lose terminal access to their main server. I wanted a place to store my old programming bits and bobs that I could still SSH into. I found the SDF back then and it served that purpose well. At that point, I learned of bboard and I like to read that from time to time (although I have never posted to it).
(For those not in the know, bboard is described at https://sdf.org/?tutorials/bboard-tutorial )
SDF is notable to me because it a shell account plus more things. This elevates it past any computer I can just set up with any Linux distro. The “more things” is what keeps me checking back and what makes SDF special to me.
Lurking on IRC via tmux and bboard on the main cluster, plus general hacking on MetaArray.
@ddelony I keep forgetting about bboard. I should check it more often.
bboard and I have SLRN there to connect to Usenet. Hope news.sdf.net will get fixed in the future.
Happy SDF user for 9 years now. At first it was a safe place to learn and explore the command line.
I use SDF for DynamicDNS, NextCloud, mail, Anonradio, and sometimes a convenient place to proxy through.
There are enough tools and toys available for years of learning and experimentation. Enjoy!
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.
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.
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.
I originally used SDF for the UNIX shell, but have now been using Mastodon for a few years, and now Lemmy. I’ve also enjoyed listening to AnonRadio.
