links2 brutaldon

2023-10-02

prophet of the book of links preaches

prophet of the book of links

brutaldon in links2

Let's start this one slow. It has been written in the holy book of the links2 cult, that anyone, who wishes to brave the sickly sands of the plain-web desert unprepared, must brace themselves for the horrors of digital diseases. And truly, the prophets of old (browsers) were right. Trackers, auto-playing media, ads that watch one urinate...

The prophet rose to his feet without saying a word and walked some distance away from the firepit, around which the apostles sat. They observed him patiently, silently reaching into their pockets for chewed quills and almost emptied ink jars. They knew the prophet would speak. Some minutes passed. All that one could hear were buzzing sounds of prehistoric insects around the flame and the ocasional crack and sift of the damp branches in the pit. The horned redskinned apostle could not bear the prophet's silence any longer:

"What of the fediverse, the mastodons?! Thou sayeth the decentralized way shines a bright light on the peoples. Our friends fled the walled gardens of the Metacities, and yet we cannot engage with them. Thou shuns all that is javascriptae. But what good is our way, if we disregard even the good kinds?! Even those we consider our allies laugh at our ways!"

The other apostles whispered in surprise. Afraid how the prophet would react to the devil's blasphemous outcry.

"Thou have missed the lesson, child. We have not chosen this path for easy comforts. We chose it, for we believe there are right ways and there are poor ways. It is true that our world is changing to some benefit of our brethren in the cyber war, but the machine has clouded the judgement of most. Their abodes stand on a foundation of exploits. They no longer can see the right way."

The prophet paused for a moment and looked up at the moon, clouded by the branches of the forest. Then continued:

"Has not the creator removed javascript from links2 themself? It was once part of our life, but not anymore, for it was not the right one. Were we to disregard their holy intentions, perhaps we too would now be bleeding on the front lines, struggling for breathing space. We gave up the tools that can be abused, so that we could find the good ways and teach the people."

The horned apostle hung his head in shame, asking for the prophet's forgiveness. But the prophet reassured him:

"It is not blasphemous to question our ways. Now listen, for I will tell you how to find your friends."

brutaldon

How to reach the fediverse with links2

Way of trust

If there is someone you trust and they offer you to use their brutaldon instance, your battle is already won. You just direct links2 to the url.

Here we are using a publicly reachable instance brutaldon.org.

Way of purity

You may want to run a brutaldon server locally, just for yourself and connect to it through a socket. This way the only person you need to trust is yourself.

At this point your local brutaldon server is running. Point links2 to 127.0.0.1:8000

Now listen very closely

People get this wrong and blame the holy browser for faults that are in fact its features. Whether you took the way of trust or purity, the following applies to both.

Why the extra step???

links2 by design caches all pages you visit during the session. This is a feature so you don't go around wasting bandwidth. Similarly, while using brutaldon, you will want to remember the refresh shortcut for every time you want to update the feeds or notifications.

This applies to any online services that let you log in without javascript. Invidious instances, forums, etc.

And of course, the preceeding steps apply to any browser. You already know I use mothra with brutaldon this way.