Links
What better way to discover places on the web?
Back before search engines became ubiquitous, how did web users get around? Simple: they followed the vast network of links that they'd encounter on their favorite people's websites. Personal homepages leading to other homepages, webrings , resource sites and so on.
It is a more personal, simple and less advertising-friendly way to find your way around the web compared to using a search engine. Curated link lists are a decent way to find websites that you would otherwise have never heard of; since the more popular and commercialised a website, the further up they usually appear in a search engine.
Hence, on this page you will be able to find a list of links to websites I personally think are great for various reasons! They are neatly categorised, commented and sorted alphabetically within their categories, too.
Of course, to keep the spirit of the tiny, personal and retro web, this will not feature social media (like SpaceHey ) or similar larger service-oriented projects. Instead, I would like to showcase people's personal pet projects, and obscure, old, or otherwise interesting content-first web pages I stumble upon.
Table of Contents
Link Lists
Personal Homepages Knowledge and Resources Small Communities Web Utilities Software
Bannerlink
Feel free to peruse the following thematically ordered lists.
These are personal homepages of other people, just like this one!
Cobradile A bilingual homepage entirely in Scots and Gaelic. Contains game dev content, various retro technologies, blogs, and a plethora more.
Cyberpeach Well designed cute personal homepage of an artist called Erica. Appears to be dormant since 2022 .
The Cyber Vanguard Static web site of a technology, programming and Unix geek including many cool resources and a blog.
Dizzy's Bunny Hell Homepage of a good friend and fellow bunny rabbit enthusiast, and similar to mine in layout and content. Cute shrines, art, fonts, writing, and personal blog posts. Also contains a guestbook.
Kaiteng Bilingual personal web page of a language nerd, artist and proud native of the Kainuu people in Finland.
Mars 2027 Dreamy homepage of a jpop/kpop/cpop fan called Melo.
Mela's Candy Castle Homepage of a penpal of mine, structured similarly to Libre Town, containing their art and a blog.
Melonking Homepage of the iconic Melonking. Tons of content that gives you whiplash: with 3D modelled worlds, music, art, and little crevices and surprises everywhere, it's an overwhelming symposium of artistic expression.
TheFrugalGamer Sweetly designed personal site full of shrines, generators and cool resources mainly about retro games, dolls, pixel art, worldbuilding and more.
These are sites that can arm you with a new skill or gift you knowledge.
Axesslab Blog Accessibility-focused blog with actionable advice.
Cool But Obscure X11 Tools An expansive list of really cool and mostly ancient single-purpose progams designed for the X windowing system, which most GNU/Linux/BSD/Unix systems use.
Ex Astris Scientia A comprehensive Star Trek fan page including all kinds of background information and fan analyses you never ever even thought of cataloguing.
GBStudio Documentation Documentation about an easy to use – albeit sometimes buggy – game engine for the GameBoy. It can even run your games on real hardware!
Glottolog A comprehensive database of nearly all known languages, sortable by language family, dialect and much more. Most languages have literature attached for further reading.
Graham's TWM page 2 A little (second) page about the 1987 X.org window manager TWM (Tom's Window Manager), and how to easily customise and use it in today's day and age.
The Jargon File The "Jargon File" is a legendary dictionary of hacker and nerd slang from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Invaluable resource.
The Javascript Trap Why can Javascript endanger your freedom? An easy-to-understand overview as to why you should reconsider your site's scripts.
Omniglot Smaller encyclopedia of languages, writing systems and various related topics. Comprehensive really only when it comes to constructed languages.
These are sites of smaller communities, usually focused around similar topics as mine: the personal web, technical minimalism and design maximalism, and socialising outside of predatory social media.
32bit Café >An expansive and nice online community about the Web Revival, including guides, resources, free services, contests, idea collections, inspiration for your webcraft, and a very friendly Discord group.
Onio.Café A very cute internet chatbox and personal site operated by an onion. Contains an interesting blog, various clubs, links and most importantly a cozy chat room as its main page.
Peelopaalu Very comprehensive but unfortunately abandoned list of obscure, weird and functional websites left over from the golden age of the internet.
Web Weekly Unfortunately abandoned web zine about the small web, showcasing a new website every now and then, conducting interviews, and generally being pretty snazzy web journalists!
XHTML Club Tiny community around building websites in pure XHTML ; like Libre Town used to be.
These are online utilities I found useful.
Marginalia Search An independent search engine that prioritizes good websites! How do they do it? It doesn't show sites with excessive Javascript, ads, cookies, tons of design or external resources. Instead they incentivise content richness, uniqueness, age, plain text and tilde sites. Shows additional information for your query; where's your search term on the site? What others are they connected to? The perfect search engine to surf the web, really.
This contains links to software that I enjoy using, usually in the spirit of reviving the more expressive digital identity: free software, old software that's still maintained, and cool whimsical gadgets.
Artix Linux A GNU+Linux distribution based on Arch Linux, but without the controversial init system systemd.
Audacious Media Player A free and open source media player that among many other features supports classic WinAMP skins and behaviour!
Bodhi Linux Linux distribution that comes with a fancy, super customizable desktop by default (Moksha).
Claws Mail Classic fully featured e-mail organizer
DeaDBeeF Modular music organization and playing program.
Devuan A GNU+Linux distribution based on Debian, but without the controversial init system systemd.
Dockapps If you use Window Maker, you can get your dockapps in this collection.
ELinks Text-based web browser for your terminal that supports colors and more.
EMWM A new(!) Motif-based window manager that tries to combine compatibility with Motif elegance
Enlightenment Very customizable, once-popular window manager that unfortunately the community kind of died out for despite active development.
Gajim Actively developed XMPP client, the one I use. Takes the good parts of Discord's UI with the right amount of *nix simplicity.
Galmuri fonts Free fonts based on the Nintendo DS' design philosophy. This website used to use Galmuri 9 before I switched to a serif typeface!
Kristall Customizable, minimal web browser with support for Gopher, Gemini, HTTP, Finger etc.
KVIrc Cool Qt-based IRC client that used to be included in KDE, lots of features and beautiful to look at.
LibreWolf Completely free and open source Firefox fork focused on software freedom and privacy. I use this!
Liferea Linux Feed Reader. That's what it means. Does just what it says: allows you to follow and read all of the RSS feeds you stumble upon in one sleek little program.
LXQt A desktop environment for GNU/Linux that's lightweight, super customizable and has a lot of inbuilt retro charme if you customize it well.
Manuskript Novel and storyboard management program for authors.
Micro Terminal text editor related to GNU nano, but with syntax highlighting and a nicer UX.
NineIcons An icon pack full of MacOS 9 styled retro icons. I commonly use these icons as profile pictures or little pictograms, and my computer is also using these!
Org-mode (quickstart guide) A quickstart guide to org-mode; a plain-text markup language for note-taking that can be extended, scripted, and REALLY interactive and in-depth if you want it to: collapsable headlines, to-do tracking, calendar, and much more.
Trinity Desktop A fully featured desktop environment for GNU/Linux systems, specifically a continuation of golden-age KDE, KDE 3.5.
Trisquel easy to use beginner GNU + Linux distribution that only allows free (libre) software. Easy to install and use, but beware of devices that don't have free drivers, those won't work out of the box.
Wind Another clean and simple X11 window manager from ages past, developed by the great Johan Veenhuizen.
WindowLab A clean and simple window manager for X11 systems developed by Nick Gravgaard.
Window Maker One of the coolest window managers in history with a long and rich tradition, including the concept of Dockapps.
Xfce The "eternal third" desktop environment for Unix-like systems. More lightweight than KDE and Gnome, and no less polished (arguably even more, actually).
Zim Desktop Wiki Did you ever want to have your own wiki on your computer to organize your notes, for example for a worldbuilding project? Zim makes it possible.
Bannerlink is an independent "ad" network that actually does not run any commercial ads, but just looks like it for aesthetic reasons. It rotates through banners submitted by users to advertise their personal projects, websites, blogs and web revival pages. Note that I have no influence on what pops up here, but generally these seem to be alright and it's just a different way to discover cool new web pages:
If nothing shows up here, the ad usually failed to load, or you use a device or browser that does not support iframes. Good on you!
