# SDF Public Access Unix System

29 Hacker News commenters recommended SDF Public Access Unix System and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 20 years (4 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Long-running public Unix shell and hosting service with Gopher, Gemini and vintage systems. Common caveat: support has slowed and some say admins are unresponsive.

## Why people recommend it

- Gopher and Gemini sites included (4 comments): "If you're starting out, you can get your own "gopherhole" and Unix shell account at https://sdf.org/" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901987)) "Among many, many other services, you can get your own Gopher or Gemini site there." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50232980)) "Gopher://sdf.org and a few more than proxies to Gutenberg and the like." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46418958))
- Old-school community and culture (4 comments): "It's like a shining beacon of the old school computing scene that's still standing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117900)) "The people you meet there in bboard and com are necessarily very interesting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49917517)) "i wish my less cs-oriented friends could see how cool i think the sdf is" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824502))
- Reliable, long-running, trusted for hosting (3 comments): "I feel like I would trust them more than probably anyone else for hosting a static website for a 100 years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46643961)) "I have been a member of SDF for over 15 years now and I use it all the time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47837226)) "Super reliable and awesome community." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47821506))
- Shell access to vintage systems (3 comments): "They also offer a service to ssh into various vintage systems, which is cool" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47165596)) "to experiment with actual working history is very entertaining!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834822)) "we can access even ancient OSes, this is amazing!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47831973))

## What people warn about

- Administration slow or unresponsive (2 comments): "it’s just not as robust as it once was with regards to support" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49915961)) "the administration is unresponsive and I gave up on them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49913657))
- Outages and account lockouts (2 comments): "I've been locked out for something like a year due to a config issue on the server side" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49918388)) "it's been down for 2 weeks without much of an update" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47831831))
- Shell escape reported by a user (2 comments): "if you can escape as non verified user, than you can mass automate it to do ddos etc..." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47845360)) "I found a way to escape their shell (so you can run whatever you want)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47831283))

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://sdf.org/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "SDF Public Access Unix System", https://hackerapproved.com/p/sdf-public-access-unix-system/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).