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 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.
- Dizzy's Bunny Hell | Homepage of a fellow bunny lover, and very similar to mine in layout and content. Cute shrines, art, 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.
- Mars 2027 | Dreamy homepage of a jpop/kpop/cpop fan.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- XHTML Club | Tiny community around building websites with pure XHTML; like this one!
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!
- Devuan | A GNU+Linux distribution based on Debian, but without the controversial init system systemd.
- Galmuri fonts | Free fonts based on the Nintendo DS' design philosophy. This website uses Galmuri 9!
- 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.
- 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!
- Trinity Desktop | A fully featured desktop environment for GNU/Linux systems, a fork of KDE 3.5.