Comment by MontyCarloHall | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MontyCarloHall | Hacker News Reader

Who exactly is the target audience of this?

Shell accounts were useful and thus popular 20-30 years ago when UNIX systems were still something relatively exotic. It was a cheap way for the average home user to get limited access to a computing resource that was otherwise completely inaccessible to them. (Indeed, my first exposure to UNIX was via an SDF shell account, after trying in vain for hours to get RedHat to work on my parents’ old 486.)

Today, Linux installs easily on pretty much any modern consumer hardware. VPSs are a dime a dozen (and much more powerful and cheaper than what SDF offers). Is SDF’s user base purely driven by nostalgia (they still offer dialup access for $7-10/month [0]), or does it provide some useful service not available anywhere else that I’m missing?

[0] https://sdf.org/?join

I use it to ping/trace/test my servers from an external network to verify whether network behavior is being produced by local config or conditions.

It’s not just a shell service it’s a community of people who started out providing a shell service and kept it running . They also provide access to Lisp machines I believe and other things like a Minecraft server .

The lisp machine access is certainly something new. I haven't seen that mentioned at all. Would definitely like to fiddle with it.

To me, the main draw is that of a Unix system shared by multiple people. It's a pretty unique experience, much different to "single-user" Unix systems like most of us run today.

Some of us have been on lonestar for 30yrs and have made a lot of connections. Also, there's games.

Heck ya! :-)

There’s also gopher and Gemini hosting.

It sounds like they cater specifically to "the aural and visually impaired", but I can't figure out how?

As a primarily text based interface I suppose it's well suited to assistive technologies like screen readers. I worked with a blind user back in the 90s who stuck with DOS and a terminal into a Unix server long after Windows/XWindows were common due to better compatibility with the assistive tech he was using.

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