ClueNet, an open-source community offering free shells

Cobi · Lurker Joined: 30 Dec 2003 Posts: 121 Location: IRC

The Internet has always been a place for corroboration and communication, but most Internet communities have degraded substantially. There are large numbers of communities devoted exclusively to sexual talk, and others that focus on illegal activities such as attacking servers or piracy. Here and there, good communities spring up and foster information exchange as well as general chatting. However, in many cases, these are few, far between, and small.

A new community has emerged from the merging of several existing communities that is focused on computer learning and development. The community is largely based in IRC, but many community members have contributed their resources to the good of everyone to provide free services to the Internet. This new community is called Cluenet.

Cluenet was initially formed by the merging of two UNIX shell account providers: Chules.Net and C&HServices. Both providers maintained online communities of their own and provided only free services to people. The respective administrators of these two providers, going by the nicknames Crispy and Cobi, decided to join together, connect the servers together both socially and technologically, and try to foster a large Internet community of intelligent students, users, and administrators. Since its creation, many more people have offered to donate their resources to the network, and their servers have been integrated into the Cluenet infrastructure.

A single account on Cluenet gains access to (currently) half a dozen shell account servers (with IRC access and web hosting capabilities), extensive and very customizable email services, IPv6 over TCP tunnels, a compile cluster, and more. An experimental service will even allow users to have their own, free virtual private server. All of these services are focused around preserving and growing a great community.

The Cluenet web site can be accessed at www.cluenet.org and the main IRC channel is #clueirc on irc.cluenet.org. From experienced UNIX server administrators to people that are completely new to computers but eager to learn, we'd love to have you join us.