Welcome to the LINKS page!

Back before search engines became ubiquitous, how did web users get around? Simple: they followed the vast network of links that they'd find on their favorite people's websites. Personal homepages leading to more homepages, webrings, resource sites...

It is a more personal, simple and less advertising-friendly way to find your way around the web. Curated link lists are a decent way to find websites that you would otherwise never have heard of; since the more popular 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 more obscure websites I personally think are great for various reasons! They are neatly categorized, commented and sorted alphabetically within their categories, too.

Of course, to keep in the spirit of the tiny, personal and retro web, this will not feature social media (like SpaceHey) and similar larger "service" oriented pages. Instead, I want to showcase people's personal pet projects, obscure, old, or otherwise interesting content-first web pages.

Personal Homepages

These are personal homepages of other people, just like this one!

• Cobradile | A homepage contained entirely within a faux retro-themed operating system. Contains game dev content, various retro technologies, blogs, and a plethora of more content.
• Cyberpeach | Very well designed nostalgic but current personal homepage of an artist called Erica.
• 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 lover, and very similar to mine in layout and content. Cute shrines, art, fonts, writing, and personal blog posts. Also contains a guestbook.
• GeckoF | Retro-themed webpage about retro software and hardware, featuring a very extensive link lists, and versions in both Gopher and WML/WAP.
• 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.
• Mela's Candy Castle | Homepage of a dear penpal of mine, 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.

Knowledge and Resources

These are sites that can arm you with a new skill or resources.

• Axesslab Blog | Accessibility-focused blog.
• Based.Cooking | A no-nonsense international recipe archive with a sleek minimal design, no ads or tracking, and no useless backstory in front of every recipe.
• 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 analysis you NEVER even thought of catalogueing.
• GBStudio Documentation | Documentation about an easy to use (but sometimes bugged) game engine for the GameBoy. It can even run created games on real hardware!
• Glottolog | A comprehensive database of all languages known to man, 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 further customize it and use it in 2022.
• 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 only when it comes to constructed languages.

Small communities and projects

These are sites of smaller projects and communities, usually focused around similar topics as mine: the personal web, technical minimalism and design maximalism, and socializing outside of predatory social media.

• 32bit Café | An expansive and nice online community about the Web Revival, including guides, contests, idea collections, inspiration for your webcraft, and a very friendly Discord group.
• Marginalia Search | An independent search engine that prioritizes good websites! How do they do it? It does not show sites with excessive Javascript, ads, cookies, tons of design or external resources, instead incentivizes content richness, old, plain text or tildespace 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.
• 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 list of obscure and functional little websites left over from the golden age of the internet.
• Web Weekly | 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 with pure XHTML; like this one!
• Yukinu's forum | Really small cozy forum about tech, webrings and websites with just a couple active members.

Pimp your PC

These are links to software that I like 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 | An 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

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! Alternatively, your browser throws out the idea of an iframe because I declared this document as pure XHTML 1.0 Strict. Oopsie woopsie.