OCTADE's Post

I was thinking about the same thing earlier today. We had a wonderland with the real internet before FedCorp and CorpGov began strangling it with their addictive insanity platforms.

This morning as I was thinking about the old Internet, I was fiddling around with old gnutella clients and P2P networks. I can't even use gtk-gnutella because its proxy function is hosed. The old standby, Phex, has a borked website. I felt a great loss with Phex no longer being updated.

The torrent ecosystem is so fragmented that it is almost useless for anything other than software piracy and p0rnz, if you want to wade through torrent tracker sites that are loaded with malware.

#Usenet is still hanging on. There are even a few new groups added in the past year.

There is still hope and light for retro-styled P2P networks:

MLDonkey still works on Linux the last time I checked.

Shareaza and DC++ appear to still be working, although I have not tested them in years.

WinMX has been redone by the original developer into a darknet version and a clearnet version:
DarkMX: https://darkmx.app/
Fopnu: https://fopnu.com/

There is still a niche for old-school web sites:

https://neocities.org/

Project Gutenberg is going strong.

The Internet Archive is hanging on.

Lots of gopher sites have popped up in recent years.

There are still hundreds of bulletin board systems (BBS) in operation.
https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/


Not all is lost. You just now have to work hard to find stuff that travels the old ways.