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!

TBH, I only just now discovered SDF. But I’m curious to explore the services more.

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.

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.

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 just joined tonight so I’m not fully understanding what SDF is all about at this point and what I can do with it.

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.

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.

Hi! I picked this instance because it was recommended, but I don’t know it’s main purpose? Tbh, I’m still kinda getting the hang of lemmy. Is there anything I should know? I’m trying to use it as a Reddit alternative

The mission statement is so simple:

-=- a community platform for inspiring, facilitating and implementing new ideas -=-

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.