Hacker News Reader

In France .fr.st was a popular free option

Yup, and .fr.fm too

Yeah, also .de.tf. I just looked it up and my old site is on the wayback machine. So many memories.

de.vu always rubbed me the wrong way because it kinda looked/sounded like DVU, a far-right political party that eventually merged with the neo-nazi NPD (which, fun fact, recently rebranded itself as Die Heimat - Homeland). To be fair, the party didn't have much political relevance for most of its history but it did manage to win seats in some state (Land) parliaments in 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2007 so it did come up in the news around the time those domains were most popular.

On the other hand, .tk was in my mind mostly associated with German hobbyists and piracy. I think my old StarCraft/CounterStrike clan had a .tk domain at one point.

Never got the DVU connection, my AoE1/2 clan had .de.vu before we got a .de, I also know several other people in my class who had one.

On the other hand .tk is more something I remember in connection with spam and scam :D