social-unix-servers.md 4.1 KB
title: Social Unix servers
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This document will teach you what Social Unix servers are. Users without a technical background will benefit the most from this document. This document consists of the following sections:
- What is Unix?
- Servers and clients
- A common server-client setup
- What does "social" mean in the context of social Unix servers?
What is Unix?
As Wikipedia puts it, "Unix is a family of multitasking, multiuser, computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, development starting in the 1970s at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others."
Okay, let's slow down here, that was a lot of jargon.
To simplify things, nowadays (2019 as I write this), when people say Unix, they probably mean one of the Unix-like operating systems that derived from the original AT&T Unix, such as:
- GNU/Linux [1]
- FreeBSD
- OpenBSD
- NetBSD
- and many more
So, Unix is a family of similar operating systems, and an operating system allows you to control your computer. Currently, you are probably already familiar with an operating system. Windows and macOS are two popular ones right now.
[1]: I understand that Linux is a kernel, and GNU is a set of tools that can interact with the Linux kernel, but that's a whole other discussion.
Servers and clients
Before you continue to the next two sections "What is a server?" and "What is a client?", you should know that the descriptions in each of the sections below are generalized. They leave out information related to server and client processes. This is done intentionally so readers are not overwhelmed with information.
What is a server?
A server is hardware or software that has been configured to accept connections from other hardware or software.
An example of a server could be a computer that has chat server software running on it, so other people can connect and chat to each other.
What is a client?
A client is hardware or software that has been configured to connect to other hardware or software.
An example of a client could be your internet browser, which connects to a social media website (a server).
A common server-client setup
One kind of server-client setup could involved three computers: computer A, computer B, and computer C. Let's pretend computer B's settings have been configured to accept connections from other computers. Computer A can connect to computer B to communicate with computer C (See Figure 1 below).
+------------+ +------------+ +------------+
| |--------->| |-----------<| |
| computer A | | computer B | | computer C |
| |<---------| |<-----------| |
+------------+ +------------+ +------------+
Figure 1
What does "social" mean in the context of social Unix servers?
The "social" here refers to how people socialize on Unix servers. This could be through:
- Message boards
- Real-time chat
- Local [2] Email
- Games
- and many more.
All of this "local" business seems limiting, but it is a great way to experience non-commercial digital mediums of social interactions that may otherwise be monitored or monetized without your knowing. This is also a great way to avoid dark patterns.
Another example of something "local" is tilde.town's botany game where the player can grow a virtual plant. The user is responsible for watering their plant, but users can also water each other's plants. Only tilde.town users can play this game with other tilde.town users if they are connected to tilde.town.
In this case, tilde.town is the server, and the users connecting to tilde.town are clients.
[2]: The word "local" in this context refers to user-to-user emails on a server, rather than communicating with external email services, such as Protonmail. "Local" is just a fancy word people use to refer to something that doesn't leave or connect to another computer.