Yay! I signed up on my first pubnix ever. I made a shell account at envs.net, which I was already using the Mastodon/ActivityPub service from (this one). Unfortunately the username "fab" was already taken, so I chose "dan" from my real name Daniel. I signed up on Mon, 12 Jan 2026 so I'm a member for a week and 3 days now. If you have at least a little experience with the commandline, then it won't be too hard even for users who never participated with a pubnix. And envs.net is already very well set up right from the beginning.
https://envs.net/
gemini://envs.net/
gopher://envs.net/
I was busily learning and setting things up the last days, but I still have to find my way around a little. All those special gadgets and gizmos that are available to the user are amazing! I've already set up a web page, a Gemini page and a little Gopher Hole with a phlog, which I'll use for publishing about my experiences and learning progress the most. I got also active on the Tildeverse IRC servers with my nick "fab" (not "dan", that was taken) and am mainly hanging around in the #meta and #envs channels (ircs://irc.tilde.chat:6697). I'm not very experienced with IRC and try my best to follow the rules, but if you're nice, then nobody would bite your head off, if you accidently do something wrong. But there were and still are a lot of things I had/have to learn.
Most of the people at envs.net and on the Tildeverse IRC servers are very helpful and friendly. And they're very diverse. A really nice bunch of folks (at least those I already talked to). So if you are in search for a general purpose tilde with a minimalist approach, I can only recommend envs.net.
But if you are new to Pubnixes, I recommend a longer research. They can differ a lot. Some have special interests or purposes, some are especially for LGBTQ people and they may have different demands in participation activity and behaviour. I even found one especially about baking (breadpunks.club). So do your homework before signing up to your first pubnix.
But I can't say often enough, how much fun I had the last week. Setting up, learning, creating. It's great! Here are my links:
https://envs.net/~dan/ - This is just an "About and Contacts" page (yet)
gemini://envs.net/~dan/ - This is also mostly a short informational Gemini page
gopher://envs.net/1/~dan/ - This is my Gopher Hole with a phlog. I think this will be my main publishing platform about my adventures and experiences in the Tildeverse. It's maintained with a CLI app called "burrow" by James Tomasino, which is a breeze to use. Some short configuration and you have your Gopher Hole and phlog up and running.
https://gopher.envs.net/envs.net/1/~dan/ - This is a web proxy to my Gopher Hole at envs.net
If you want to write to me concerning my pages or my shell account at envs.net in general, you can write email to '~dan '. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!
And if you ever wanted to know how it's like to be part of a multiuser Linux system with cool, friendly and helpful people try a Tilde/Pubnix!
#envs #pubnix #tilde #tildeverse