Re: where do I find extra peers?

[Mateusz Viste]

On 25/08/2020 11:30, Fungi4All wrote:
> I wished someone who has been successful to write an easy to follow step by 
> step guide for dummies.

I found the instructions provided in the handbook pretty easy to follow 
- as far as "installation" is concerned at least. Well, I had some 
little troubles building the thing, but I can't say I was surprised to 
run into minor problems.

Currently I am able to see a few peers, so I guess I'm good. I'm unable 
to do anything beyond that, though - so my assumption is that the peers 
I see simply do not provide much service. The fact that the protocol 
changed last month and broke the network probably bears some part of its 
responsibility for such limited size of the current gnunet mesh.

> The manual as written appeals to those who are interested in theory and are 
> able to understand it.

That is my feeling as well - I have read the documentation, it it very 
well written and goes into much details, but overall the project looks 
(to me) like it is a toy for academic people that like to play with 
number theories. Nothing wrong with that of course - I suppose every 
advanced technology must start like that.

> I hope I don't get any responses to this of the type "gnunet is not for 
> everyone".

Well, it clearly isn't for everyone - first barrier is the platform 
(linux only), then comes the complexity of the whole thing (I'm esp. 
confused about the entire GNS subsystem) and the fact that nothing is 
stable yet. Not surprising: it is, after all, a very much "work in 
progress" project, and the founders are quite honest about it ("largely 
not yet ready for usage beyond developers").

There are other interesting projects if one seeks immediate 
functionality: I was playing with Freenet last week, it is a nice 
multiplatform project that is trivial to install (I got a a working 
access to the network within 10 minutes). There is also the IPFS which 
is maturing nicely, but the goals are obviously much different.

That being said, I cannot say that I am not a tiny little bit 
disappointed - I was expecting at least some very minimal form of "demo" 
functionality, unfortunately gnunet's network appear to be a desert 
place at the moment.

Mateusz