13 ms·

www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

290 points by hougaard 5y ago

mattl 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056273 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfr...
- tpmx 5y ago
  Announced the day of the Ukraine invasion...
  - mattl 5y ago
    Was the writer based in Ukraine?
    - danudey 5y ago
      Canada (and, since 2014, Vancouver specifically).
- causality0 5y ago
  Was there an explanation? Considering the low traffic I'm sure they could keep it running off of donations from nostalgic readers.
  - Lascaille 5y ago
    From a quick flick through based on that link, the issue seems to be that the forum code is bespoke and written in perl, and the environment (apache & mod_perl, nothing great, nothing terrible) is obsolete and nobody who's volunteered to port it in the past actually followed through.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Maintaining a working forum is obviously a chore, but converting it to read only pages could have been worth it.
      - Gigachad 5y ago
        archive.org is that readonly form.
- CobrastanJorji 5y ago
  The discussion on that last thread is interesting. Somebody put together a list of all of the marriages that came from people who met on that forum, and it was not a short list.
  - fouc 5y ago
    Interesting indeed, at least 6 couples.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
It used to be a daily visit, for me. RIP, lil' Crud Puppy, and Great Old Ones...
- topspin 5y ago
  I have been known to drop into Pitr's accent. No one gets it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zem 5y ago
oh no :( i used to go back and read it every now and then. RIP.
ssl232 5y ago
Can someone explain the significance of this to HN noobs (apparently I'm one)?
- jfim 5y ago
  It was a webcomic that was popular when slashdot and kuro5hin were more popular. You can read more about it on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly
  - deltarholamda 5y ago
    I just wandered over to Slashdot earlier today. It's sad to see what it has become. It's also sad to see UF burn out as well. I miss Ye Olde Internets.
    - folkrav 5y ago
      I've never really frequented Slashdot, I've taken a short look at it right now. What's going on with it that's so sad to look at? I feel like I'm missing context...
      - morelisp 5y ago
        Sustained shortage of ASCII Penis Birds over the past decade.
      - kstrauser 5y ago
        Among other things, almost all stories used to have at least a couple hundred comments. Today there are stories on the front page with less than 10. The last nail in the coffin for me was their utter refusal to remove absolutely abhorrent comments. Not stuff like "I voted for someone different than you did", but bullshit like https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=56138950 https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=561389... (CW: extreme antisemitism). I spent a lot of time on Slashdot over the years, and had a 4-digit UID that I'd bust on the inevitable "who's been here longer?" comment chains. But while they have the right to allow the comments section to fill with horrid stuff, I don't want anything to do with that.
Flocular 5y ago
Got announced 2 weeks ago https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082910/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056273 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082910/http://ars.userfr...
tiernano 5y ago
I must have re-read this site multiple times over... still go back every now and again... looks like it is archived though. First post: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225094808/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19971117 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225094808/http://ars.userfr...
MandieD 5y ago
A webcomic that started back when mid-sized US/Canadian towns really did have one-stop ISPs that employed both experienced sysadmins, the new web designers doing sites for local businesses, and students just getting started in IT - and were places where all of the above could actually advance or at least enjoy their careers, not just languish as call center drones. I was lucky enough to spend a couple of summers in high school then after my freshman year of college working at a similar outfit in my hometown. It had about 1500 subscribers paying about $20-30/mo for dialup around 1997-99. Anyway, that’s where I was introduced to User Friendly, and we’d laugh together over the funnier ones. Go to “Storylines” to find the ones you remember: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225091648/http://www.userfriendly.org/archivist/gallery/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220225091648/http://www.userfr...
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I could've written every word of this. That launched a pretty fun career for me.
- xattt 5y ago
  In the mid-90s, Toronto used to have two(!) free computer-centric newspapers. One of those papers used to reprint these comics, but can’t remember which one. I still remember reading one of the news blurbs in one issue that Linux 2.4.8 was out of beta. This was such a bizarre way to get updates about Linux.
- dmd 5y ago
  I started my career, kinda, as an unpaid admin (I was 14) for Panix.com, one of the oldest ISPs anywhere. Coincidentally, my wife started hers at Software Tool & Die / The World - the actual first ISP!
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  Yup. I remember having issues as a teenager getting ISP service in Australia in the 90s. I hopped on a train and a bus to their office, handed over an envelope with a few months payments in cash, and they walked me back to a rack, jumped on a Linux console and 'adduser'ed me.
- 5y ago
jmclnx 5y ago
Sad to see it go, I would read it daily even the repeats. I did buy one of the books years ago. Maybe other books were release since :) Will have to look
techsupporter 5y ago
I still have my "lifetime" User Friendly membership card signed by Illiad and "Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell, a User Friendly Guide to World Domination" from O'Reilly. I wish I had found a copy of the first UF compilation book, and that my copy of "Ten Years of UserFriendly.org" hadn't been destroyed in a move. For those of us who have been doing this for a very long time, User Friendly was the salve to the dry business side of Dilbert. Think the xkcd tech support cheat sheet (https://xkcd.com/627/ https://xkcd.com/627/) but with far more snark and characters.
- laumars 5y ago
  Dilbert was a lot more generic too. I think most companies reflected Dilbert in one way or another. But User Friendly was a lot more specialised. At least that’s how I remembered them.
  - techsupporter 5y ago
    Agreed. Dilbert was for if you worked in an office building doing pretty much anything. User Friendly was for a very specific niche of people who either worked at mid-sized ISPs (like MandieD wrote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30593421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30593421) or who supporter or empathized with people who worked at mid-sized ISPs. "Thank you for calling Columbia Internet, this is Miranda."
    - FireBeyond 5y ago
      Mostly. Every once in a while Dilbert would surprise: Dilbert: My company asked all employees to act as salespeople to friends and family. I think you could use this, mom. Dilbert's mom: Why would I need a primary rate circuit? I've already got a frame relay drop to my web server in the sewing room. Dilbert (thought bubble): This is going to be a tough sale. Dilbert's mom: Hello-o-o! Earth to Dilbert! This is packet data ... Source: https://www.gocomics.com/dilbert-classics/2019/11/19 https://www.gocomics.com/dilbert-classics/2019/11/19
      - 5y ago
pavlov 5y ago
Wow, one of the originals from the Precambrian era of the web. I have a vague recollection that User Friendly started publishing on an OS/2 Warp fan site sometime around 1995-96. (Edit: on quick googling, I'm probably wrong and confusing it with something else from that era.)
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  At least the original Space Jam website lives on, although I see they relocated it with the release of the sequel last year. https://www.spacejam.com/1996/ https://www.spacejam.com/1996/
  - pavlov 5y ago
    While looking for the OS/2 site that would have hosted User Friendly, I found OS/2 e-Zine! whose first issue is still online, with the exact same HTML as in 1995: http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n1/ http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n1/ <FONT SIZE=+3>
    - kovvy 5y ago
      It's all so ... readable.
      - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
        It's uncluttered, but the contrast isn't great.
    - JasonFruit 5y ago
      It looks great on mobile too.
- xtracto 5y ago
  Part of the good old web for me: userfriendly, slashdot, zophar's domain, crackstore, fosi.da.ru, fravia, gamasutra... among several others. Those were amazing times.
an_mp_speaks 5y ago
This gives me a chance to ask about a different webcomic that I read in the early 2000s, but have totally forgotten. It also took place at a small development company or ISP. There was a dog who was a system administrator, and he might have been in love with a cat? All the characters were animals, I think, and there were the usual 90s-early 00s Linux/Microsoft jokes.
- yayachiken 5y ago
  Hackles? http://www.hackles.org/ http://www.hackles.org/
  - an_mp_speaks 5y ago
    That's the one!
    - yayachiken 5y ago
      By the way, if you liked the old-school "ISP shenenigans and Unix jokes" web-comic genre, make sure to check out https://www.gpf-comics.com/ https://www.gpf-comics.com/ It's still going, IMO still not stale (without going into spoilers: the setting really helps), even though it is also scheduled to wind down (tying up all loose threads) in the next 1-2 years. As a teen I read web-comics like GPF, Userfriendly, Sluggy Freelance religiously, which really helped my English and my nerd career. Finding out about all those big web comics dying is the first time that I genuinely feel in my core that I am getting older... :(
      - hkt 5y ago
        I feel older for the same reason - it sucks watching the internet of my youth slip away.
  - kawsper 5y ago
    I used to read that when I was a child, I am glad it is still online. I am also happy that they managed to finish the story :)
oh_sigh 5y ago
Why now? I think there hasn't been any fresh non-forum content on the site for at least 12 years. Just didn't feel like paying hosting costs, or something else?
- techsupporter 5y ago
  According to this subthread, it's that the code is positively ancient: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056338 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfr... "Like for the past 17+ years... ... I own the ISP hosting UF. The biggest problem is supporting the legacy mod_perl stuff that the site is built on... you'd basically have to re-write the entire front end, or find a very bored perl monk to update the code base. Basically to keep the ARS active, you'd need someone to take over the operations of the server & code. Maintaining it is a big deal. Cost-wise, I could bring it down quite a bit if it was moved into a VPS (which we also offer), but again - it's a maintenance/care & feeding issue. This site is still running on Apache 1.3 here. Someone would need to volunteer some senior technical skill for several weeks, and start... pretty much now."
  - sliken 5y ago
    Or just post a .tar.gz of all the comics and someone can cobble together a interface that has first, previous, next, and last comic interface.
  - jasonjayr 5y ago
    Oh man. We're not the only ones still running a mod_perl Apache 1.3 stack in production?! We have a few patches against the Apache 1.3 codebase, but, yea, it's a very old stack.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
shever73 5y ago
Pity. I used to read it regularly when I was starting in web dev in the late 90s and it was genius (even with the Metafilter thing). I browsed the archive last year during the Christmas break for a nostalgia trip!
xtracto 5y ago
Is there archive of the comics themselves? I remember them fondly.
- MandieD 5y ago
  The Wayback Machine has got your back: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225092808/http://www.userfriendly.org/archivist/gallery/storylines.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220225092808/http://www.userfr...
macintux 5y ago
Anyone know when the last new comic was posted?
- olliej 5y ago
  Per @oh_sigh it sounds like 12 years ago?
RF_Savage 5y ago
Sad day. One of the first webcomics I just binged in a few days.
zeruch 5y ago
I recall meeting Illiad and his coterie at one of the LinuxWorlds early on. A pretty affable lot they all were, and funny as hell.
pjmlp 5y ago
Oh! During the .com wave they were part of my daily news round before getting into the office.
teddyh 5y ago
I posted a link to there just four months ago¹: https://web.archive.org/web/20220226164056/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20001002 https://web.archive.org/web/20220226164056/http://ars.userfr... 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29095031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29095031
bbatchelder 5y ago
Sad. Made me think of other sites I'd visit for similar content. The Bastard Operator from Hell (BOFH) is actually still around and new content being written. https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/ https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/
- collinvandyck76 5y ago
  fires up the bulk eraser
squarefoot 5y ago
I loved that webcomic back then, also have one of his books. Sad to see it go away, although there have been no new submission for some time. Some cartoons were quite hilarious; I had this one on the wall above my desk. https://teddit.net/pics/w:720_5tenj3387my51.png https://teddit.net/pics/w:720_5tenj3387my51.png
crb3 5y ago
Haven't seen it in years, but I still remember naming the cat: "Script or Five? Which hurts less?"
donatj 5y ago
I heard this was coming a couple weeks ago. I don't know why you'd shut the entire website down, rather than just put it into hibernation? I mean I don't know what is hosting situation is, but I can't imagine there's a ton of traffic on a comic that hasn't had a new post in years. Seems like it would be worth keeping it up just for old time sake. It would be reasonable enough to host the entire thing for probably a couple bucks a year on s3.
- matt_heimer 5y ago
  Seems like it was a legacy mod_perl code base that was difficult to maintain. https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056338 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfr...
  - donatj 5y ago
    There’s a number of good tools that can rip an entire site to static content.
- mauvehaus 5y ago
  Because he's been posting reruns for approximately ever in internet time and the community has been the soul of the site for even longer. To be frank, it wasn't a webcomic you stuck with for either the art or the humor. Every now and then, there was a funny strip or storyline, but it's not something that needs to be endlessly rehashed. It seems the community has moved to another forum, so there's no real reason to keep posting reruns on some more-or-less static hibernation mode site. I hung out there sporadically for a few years and moved on. It was a small-ish community that was by and large friendly and supportive (I mean, like almost 20 years ago, can't speak for what it's like today). At that time, the regulars knew each other, at least digitally, and sometimes IRL. People may have come for the comic, but those that stayed stayed for the forum.
wolpoli 5y ago
There's something special about the picture of a pencil serving as the navigation bar for the comic.
dredmorbius 5y ago
There were a number of early webcomics, with UF being among the more prominant. Others I recall: - "Cafe Hugo", I believe. Tagline included "vague enneui", possibly also "coffee, puns, ..." or something like that. Mostly college students / recent graduates and their life at a cafe. All traces seem lost. - "Westward Ho!" was a very short-lived, and I think intentionally limited, comic about a young woman engaged in finding mutually-beneficial relationship and/or fighting for justice on the fronteir. Well executed and largely in good taste given the premise. - "Help Desk", featuring Ubersoft (guilty of Unholy Business Practices). A mention here: https://comics.fandom.com/wiki/Help_Desk https://comics.fandom.com/wiki/Help_Desk And apparently still online: https://www.eviscerati.org/comics/hd/2022/02/unprofessional-but-heartfelt/ https://www.eviscerati.org/comics/hd/2022/02/unprofessional-... - Avalon High -- a very soap-opera-ish comic about students at a Candian high school. Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20110707193859/http://www.avalonhigh.com/d/19991108.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110707193859/http://www.avalon...
- convolvatron 5y ago
  doctor fun? https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/archive.htm https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/archive.htm
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    That's one I remember seeing, based on the style.
  - shagie 5y ago
    I recall https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9707/df970710.jpg https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9707/df970710.jpg from back in my college days in the CS building.
- myself248 5y ago
  The first webcomic I remember was called Bruno, about a college-age girl with frizzy pencil hair and sardonic views on life. Kevin and Kell User Friendly Something*Positive Wow, trip down memory lane here.
phamilton 5y ago
One of my first bits of code I shared online was a scraper for userfriendly.org that would download every comic since the beginning of time. It was incredibly bad and inefficient (I didn't sleep between calls and just brute forced the image name which led to 90% 404s). Within a few days, UF announced that anyone doing wget scraping would get IP banned. I was just a kid, but it was so jarring to see something I did cause problems. I learned a ton about being a good netizen. Thanks UF and sorry for the trouble!
1970-01-01 5y ago
HEADS UP: We're Going Dark by Illiad 2022-02-24 11:04:32 Hello all, long time. We'll be shutting down the website in the coming days. It may be at the end of this month. If not, it won't be much later than that. Many UF community members have moved over to Hedgehog, which is run by Klaranth. You can find the site here. All the best, Illiad https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056273 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfr...
- latexr 5y ago
  Hedgehog link: https://hedgehog.blindambitionstudios.com https://hedgehog.blindambitionstudios.com
  - tentacleuno 5y ago
    The humour in those threads are something else :-)
tpoacher 5y ago
I posted some random comment there a couple of weeks ago. And then I went back to see if anyone replied and the site was down :/
vhodges 5y ago
I know people that worked for the company that inspired Columbia Internet (which was located on Columbia Street in New Westminster and indeed I also worked at the company they became (unrelated to the ISP stuff) for while. There are a Mike that was on the team I was and suspect it's the same guy as 'Myke'. The person hosting ufies.org is a friend and former colleague from the same company as well.
novok 5y ago
Since UF is now over, is there a book / compiled archive of the comic that isn't a wayback machine copy?
- ByteJockey 5y ago
  If you're looking for a download, someone posted a mega link higher up in the thread. Convenience link: https://mega.nz/file/GKQQVbTY#1QmzfH7r2LAilAZU2RixI4yp-9IU6QS_-ppaHyXmVQU https://mega.nz/file/GKQQVbTY#1QmzfH7r2LAilAZU2RixI4yp-9IU6Q...
smudgy 5y ago
Freshmeat nostalgia and Userfriendly going dark on the same day. I'm so damn old... I just found out today that Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda rebooted Geeks in Space (a while back, it seems). Rob, Jeff and CowboyNeal's original run of GIS was one the first podcasts I ever listened to and it was glorious.
bdbz 5y ago
I wrote a spider many years back to download the comics and display them in a local interface. Somehow it survived several migrations and was on my synology. Here is an archive of the images if anybody wants them. https://mega.nz/file/GKQQVbTY#1QmzfH7r2LAilAZU2RixI4yp-9IU6QS_-ppaHyXmVQU https://mega.nz/file/GKQQVbTY#1QmzfH7r2LAilAZU2RixI4yp-9IU6Q... RIP UF, you were a big part of my childhood
- mdaniel 5y ago
  That sounds like something that would interest archive.org
  - bdbz 5y ago
    I'll look into that. TBH I would be interested in migrating and hosting the website at my own expense.
- sgarland 5y ago
  Many thanks, I've got it on my NAS now. Fond memories of reading UF.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  UF also provided text transcripts which were searchable - did you get those too?
  - bdbz 5y ago
    I was not aware that was a thing :( Maybe I can do something with OCR/ML
- snarkerson 5y ago
  I bought on of his books but it’s not the complete series.
- Jaruzel 5y ago
  Taken a copy - thank you! I'll probably throw up a mirror of the strips on my site at some point. For others, this archive is 1997 to 2013 and is images of the strip only. I stopped reading UF around that time I think. Like many things on the web, it's only really relatable to a person for a certain period of time, before you move on (XKCD was the same, used to regularly read it, now I hardly do.)
vax10 5y ago
This gives me a real sense of the past, I always looked forward to the comic strip in Linux Journal Magazine https://archive.org/details/linuxjournalpdfcollection/January%202012/ https://archive.org/details/linuxjournalpdfcollection/Januar...
jasoneckert 5y ago
We can only assume that the Web server has been eaten by a grue.
geocrasher 5y ago
Ebbeh!!
LambdaComplex 5y ago
Quake 3 Arena (from 1999) has a Dust Puppy easter egg: https://eeggs.com/items/4693.html https://eeggs.com/items/4693.html
bouncycastle 5y ago
My fav cartoon: 6000 BC: Ungh, Grrf, Booga 2000 AD: grep, awk, sed
mindcrime 5y ago
It's a sad day. Truly the "end of an era". Although really, I guess the original "era" ended when Illiad stopped writing new UF episodes. But still, for the site to go down really puts the exclamation point on it. RIP User Friendly. But hey, at least Sluggy Freelance seems to still be alive and kicking. I really need to go back and catch up on that series. Maybe time to start over from the beginning and re-read the entire thing. What an adventure that would be!
carlospwk 5y ago
Damn. RIP, lots of laughs a long time ago.
kethryvis 5y ago
User Friendly is why i am where i am today. It's why i got the degree i did, why i have the career i have, why i have the viewpoints on that career i had today. I owe my career to User Friendly. It's a really sad day for me.
raesene9 5y ago
Shame to see it go, I still have my Dust Puppy on the shelf and a signed User Friendly card, I got back at a conf. in the 90's.
stuntkite 5y ago
Oh no! My Windows has crashed! You need Loonix! Loonix is more reliable than crappy Windows. Man. I used to read that comic every day and still pull that ANIMATED USAR FREINDLEY MOVIE every few years. Remember Slashdot?
reiichiroh 5y ago
Good riddance finally. Almost as ugly as Mega Tokyo comic strip.

290 points by hougaard 5y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056273 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfr...

tpmx 5y ago
Announced the day of the Ukraine invasion...
- mattl 5y ago
  Was the writer based in Ukraine?
  - danudey 5y ago
    Canada (and, since 2014, Vancouver specifically).
causality0 5y ago
Was there an explanation? Considering the low traffic I'm sure they could keep it running off of donations from nostalgic readers.
- Lascaille 5y ago
  From a quick flick through based on that link, the issue seems to be that the forum code is bespoke and written in perl, and the environment (apache & mod_perl, nothing great, nothing terrible) is obsolete and nobody who's volunteered to port it in the past actually followed through.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Maintaining a working forum is obviously a chore, but converting it to read only pages could have been worth it.
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      archive.org is that readonly form.
CobrastanJorji 5y ago
The discussion on that last thread is interesting. Somebody put together a list of all of the marriages that came from people who met on that forum, and it was not a short list.
- fouc 5y ago
  Interesting indeed, at least 6 couples.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

It used to be a daily visit, for me. RIP, lil' Crud Puppy, and Great Old Ones...

topspin 5y ago
I have been known to drop into Pitr's accent. No one gets it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

zem 5y ago

oh no :( i used to go back and read it every now and then. RIP.

ssl232 5y ago

Can someone explain the significance of this to HN noobs (apparently I'm one)?

jfim 5y ago
It was a webcomic that was popular when slashdot and kuro5hin were more popular. You can read more about it on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Friendly
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  I just wandered over to Slashdot earlier today. It's sad to see what it has become. It's also sad to see UF burn out as well. I miss Ye Olde Internets.
  - folkrav 5y ago
    I've never really frequented Slashdot, I've taken a short look at it right now. What's going on with it that's so sad to look at? I feel like I'm missing context...
    - morelisp 5y ago
      Sustained shortage of ASCII Penis Birds over the past decade.
    - kstrauser 5y ago
      Among other things, almost all stories used to have at least a couple hundred comments. Today there are stories on the front page with less than 10. The last nail in the coffin for me was their utter refusal to remove absolutely abhorrent comments. Not stuff like "I voted for someone different than you did", but bullshit like https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=56138950 https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=561389... (CW: extreme antisemitism). I spent a lot of time on Slashdot over the years, and had a 4-digit UID that I'd bust on the inevitable "who's been here longer?" comment chains. But while they have the right to allow the comments section to fill with horrid stuff, I don't want anything to do with that.

Flocular 5y ago

Got announced 2 weeks ago https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082910/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056273 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082910/http://ars.userfr...

tiernano 5y ago

I must have re-read this site multiple times over... still go back every now and again... looks like it is archived though. First post: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225094808/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19971117 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225094808/http://ars.userfr...

MandieD 5y ago

A webcomic that started back when mid-sized US/Canadian towns really did have one-stop ISPs that employed both experienced sysadmins, the new web designers doing sites for local businesses, and students just getting started in IT - and were places where all of the above could actually advance or at least enjoy their careers, not just languish as call center drones. I was lucky enough to spend a couple of summers in high school then after my freshman year of college working at a similar outfit in my hometown. It had about 1500 subscribers paying about $20-30/mo for dialup around 1997-99. Anyway, that’s where I was introduced to User Friendly, and we’d laugh together over the funnier ones. Go to “Storylines” to find the ones you remember: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225091648/http://www.userfriendly.org/archivist/gallery/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220225091648/http://www.userfr...

kstrauser 5y ago
I could've written every word of this. That launched a pretty fun career for me.
xattt 5y ago
In the mid-90s, Toronto used to have two(!) free computer-centric newspapers. One of those papers used to reprint these comics, but can’t remember which one. I still remember reading one of the news blurbs in one issue that Linux 2.4.8 was out of beta. This was such a bizarre way to get updates about Linux.
dmd 5y ago
I started my career, kinda, as an unpaid admin (I was 14) for Panix.com, one of the oldest ISPs anywhere. Coincidentally, my wife started hers at Software Tool & Die / The World - the actual first ISP!
FireBeyond 5y ago
Yup. I remember having issues as a teenager getting ISP service in Australia in the 90s. I hopped on a train and a bus to their office, handed over an envelope with a few months payments in cash, and they walked me back to a rack, jumped on a Linux console and 'adduser'ed me.
5y ago

jmclnx 5y ago

Sad to see it go, I would read it daily even the repeats. I did buy one of the books years ago. Maybe other books were release since :) Will have to look

techsupporter 5y ago

I still have my "lifetime" User Friendly membership card signed by Illiad and "Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell, a User Friendly Guide to World Domination" from O'Reilly. I wish I had found a copy of the first UF compilation book, and that my copy of "Ten Years of UserFriendly.org" hadn't been destroyed in a move. For those of us who have been doing this for a very long time, User Friendly was the salve to the dry business side of Dilbert. Think the xkcd tech support cheat sheet (https://xkcd.com/627/ https://xkcd.com/627/) but with far more snark and characters.

laumars 5y ago
Dilbert was a lot more generic too. I think most companies reflected Dilbert in one way or another. But User Friendly was a lot more specialised. At least that’s how I remembered them.
- techsupporter 5y ago
  Agreed. Dilbert was for if you worked in an office building doing pretty much anything. User Friendly was for a very specific niche of people who either worked at mid-sized ISPs (like MandieD wrote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30593421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30593421) or who supporter or empathized with people who worked at mid-sized ISPs. "Thank you for calling Columbia Internet, this is Miranda."
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    Mostly. Every once in a while Dilbert would surprise: Dilbert: My company asked all employees to act as salespeople to friends and family. I think you could use this, mom. Dilbert's mom: Why would I need a primary rate circuit? I've already got a frame relay drop to my web server in the sewing room. Dilbert (thought bubble): This is going to be a tough sale. Dilbert's mom: Hello-o-o! Earth to Dilbert! This is packet data ... Source: https://www.gocomics.com/dilbert-classics/2019/11/19 https://www.gocomics.com/dilbert-classics/2019/11/19
    - 5y ago

pavlov 5y ago

Wow, one of the originals from the Precambrian era of the web. I have a vague recollection that User Friendly started publishing on an OS/2 Warp fan site sometime around 1995-96. (Edit: on quick googling, I'm probably wrong and confusing it with something else from that era.)

MaxBarraclough 5y ago
At least the original Space Jam website lives on, although I see they relocated it with the release of the sequel last year. https://www.spacejam.com/1996/ https://www.spacejam.com/1996/
- pavlov 5y ago
  While looking for the OS/2 site that would have hosted User Friendly, I found OS/2 e-Zine! whose first issue is still online, with the exact same HTML as in 1995: http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n1/ http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n1/ <FONT SIZE=+3>
  - kovvy 5y ago
    It's all so ... readable.
    - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
      It's uncluttered, but the contrast isn't great.
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    It looks great on mobile too.
xtracto 5y ago
Part of the good old web for me: userfriendly, slashdot, zophar's domain, crackstore, fosi.da.ru, fravia, gamasutra... among several others. Those were amazing times.

an_mp_speaks 5y ago

This gives me a chance to ask about a different webcomic that I read in the early 2000s, but have totally forgotten. It also took place at a small development company or ISP. There was a dog who was a system administrator, and he might have been in love with a cat? All the characters were animals, I think, and there were the usual 90s-early 00s Linux/Microsoft jokes.

yayachiken 5y ago
Hackles? http://www.hackles.org/ http://www.hackles.org/
- an_mp_speaks 5y ago
  That's the one!
  - yayachiken 5y ago
    By the way, if you liked the old-school "ISP shenenigans and Unix jokes" web-comic genre, make sure to check out https://www.gpf-comics.com/ https://www.gpf-comics.com/ It's still going, IMO still not stale (without going into spoilers: the setting really helps), even though it is also scheduled to wind down (tying up all loose threads) in the next 1-2 years. As a teen I read web-comics like GPF, Userfriendly, Sluggy Freelance religiously, which really helped my English and my nerd career. Finding out about all those big web comics dying is the first time that I genuinely feel in my core that I am getting older... :(
    - hkt 5y ago
      I feel older for the same reason - it sucks watching the internet of my youth slip away.
- kawsper 5y ago
  I used to read that when I was a child, I am glad it is still online. I am also happy that they managed to finish the story :)

oh_sigh 5y ago

Why now? I think there hasn't been any fresh non-forum content on the site for at least 12 years. Just didn't feel like paying hosting costs, or something else?

techsupporter 5y ago
According to this subthread, it's that the code is positively ancient: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056338 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfr... "Like for the past 17+ years... ... I own the ISP hosting UF. The biggest problem is supporting the legacy mod_perl stuff that the site is built on... you'd basically have to re-write the entire front end, or find a very bored perl monk to update the code base. Basically to keep the ARS active, you'd need someone to take over the operations of the server & code. Maintaining it is a big deal. Cost-wise, I could bring it down quite a bit if it was moved into a VPS (which we also offer), but again - it's a maintenance/care & feeding issue. This site is still running on Apache 1.3 here. Someone would need to volunteer some senior technical skill for several weeks, and start... pretty much now."
- sliken 5y ago
  Or just post a .tar.gz of all the comics and someone can cobble together a interface that has first, previous, next, and last comic interface.
- jasonjayr 5y ago
  Oh man. We're not the only ones still running a mod_perl Apache 1.3 stack in production?! We have a few patches against the Apache 1.3 codebase, but, yea, it's a very old stack.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

shever73 5y ago

Pity. I used to read it regularly when I was starting in web dev in the late 90s and it was genius (even with the Metafilter thing). I browsed the archive last year during the Christmas break for a nostalgia trip!

xtracto 5y ago

Is there archive of the comics themselves? I remember them fondly.

MandieD 5y ago
The Wayback Machine has got your back: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225092808/http://www.userfriendly.org/archivist/gallery/storylines.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220225092808/http://www.userfr...

macintux 5y ago

Anyone know when the last new comic was posted?

olliej 5y ago
Per @oh_sigh it sounds like 12 years ago?

RF_Savage 5y ago

Sad day. One of the first webcomics I just binged in a few days.

zeruch 5y ago

I recall meeting Illiad and his coterie at one of the LinuxWorlds early on. A pretty affable lot they all were, and funny as hell.

pjmlp 5y ago

Oh! During the .com wave they were part of my daily news round before getting into the office.

teddyh 5y ago

I posted a link to there just four months ago¹: https://web.archive.org/web/20220226164056/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20001002 https://web.archive.org/web/20220226164056/http://ars.userfr... 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29095031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29095031

bbatchelder 5y ago

Sad. Made me think of other sites I'd visit for similar content. The Bastard Operator from Hell (BOFH) is actually still around and new content being written. https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/ https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/

collinvandyck76 5y ago
fires up the bulk eraser

squarefoot 5y ago

I loved that webcomic back then, also have one of his books. Sad to see it go away, although there have been no new submission for some time. Some cartoons were quite hilarious; I had this one on the wall above my desk. https://teddit.net/pics/w:720_5tenj3387my51.png https://teddit.net/pics/w:720_5tenj3387my51.png

crb3 5y ago

Haven't seen it in years, but I still remember naming the cat: "Script or Five? Which hurts less?"

donatj 5y ago

I heard this was coming a couple weeks ago. I don't know why you'd shut the entire website down, rather than just put it into hibernation? I mean I don't know what is hosting situation is, but I can't imagine there's a ton of traffic on a comic that hasn't had a new post in years. Seems like it would be worth keeping it up just for old time sake. It would be reasonable enough to host the entire thing for probably a couple bucks a year on s3.

matt_heimer 5y ago
Seems like it was a legacy mod_perl code base that was difficult to maintain. https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056338 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225082909/http://ars.userfr...
- donatj 5y ago
  There’s a number of good tools that can rip an entire site to static content.
mauvehaus 5y ago
Because he's been posting reruns for approximately ever in internet time and the community has been the soul of the site for even longer. To be frank, it wasn't a webcomic you stuck with for either the art or the humor. Every now and then, there was a funny strip or storyline, but it's not something that needs to be endlessly rehashed. It seems the community has moved to another forum, so there's no real reason to keep posting reruns on some more-or-less static hibernation mode site. I hung out there sporadically for a few years and moved on. It was a small-ish community that was by and large friendly and supportive (I mean, like almost 20 years ago, can't speak for what it's like today). At that time, the regulars knew each other, at least digitally, and sometimes IRL. People may have come for the comic, but those that stayed stayed for the forum.

wolpoli 5y ago

There's something special about the picture of a pencil serving as the navigation bar for the comic.

dredmorbius 5y ago

There were a number of early webcomics, with UF being among the more prominant. Others I recall: - "Cafe Hugo", I believe. Tagline included "vague enneui", possibly also "coffee, puns, ..." or something like that. Mostly college students / recent graduates and their life at a cafe. All traces seem lost. - "Westward Ho!" was a very short-lived, and I think intentionally limited, comic about a young woman engaged in finding mutually-beneficial relationship and/or fighting for justice on the fronteir. Well executed and largely in good taste given the premise. - "Help Desk", featuring Ubersoft (guilty of Unholy Business Practices). A mention here: https://comics.fandom.com/wiki/Help_Desk https://comics.fandom.com/wiki/Help_Desk And apparently still online: https://www.eviscerati.org/comics/hd/2022/02/unprofessional-but-heartfelt/ https://www.eviscerati.org/comics/hd/2022/02/unprofessional-... - Avalon High -- a very soap-opera-ish comic about students at a Candian high school. Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20110707193859/http://www.avalonhigh.com/d/19991108.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110707193859/http://www.avalon...

convolvatron 5y ago
doctor fun? https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/archive.htm https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/archive.htm
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  That's one I remember seeing, based on the style.
- shagie 5y ago
  I recall https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9707/df970710.jpg https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9707/df970710.jpg from back in my college days in the CS building.
myself248 5y ago
The first webcomic I remember was called Bruno, about a college-age girl with frizzy pencil hair and sardonic views on life. Kevin and Kell User Friendly Something*Positive Wow, trip down memory lane here.

phamilton 5y ago

One of my first bits of code I shared online was a scraper for userfriendly.org that would download every comic since the beginning of time. It was incredibly bad and inefficient (I didn't sleep between calls and just brute forced the image name which led to 90% 404s). Within a few days, UF announced that anyone doing wget scraping would get IP banned. I was just a kid, but it was so jarring to see something I did cause problems. I learned a ton about being a good netizen. Thanks UF and sorry for the trouble!

1970-01-01 5y ago

HEADS UP: We're Going Dark by Illiad 2022-02-24 11:04:32 Hello all, long time. We'll be shutting down the website in the coming days. It may be at the end of this month. If not, it won't be much later than that. Many UF community members have moved over to Hedgehog, which is run by Klaranth. You can find the site here. All the best, Illiad https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20220224&tid=4056273 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfr...

latexr 5y ago
Hedgehog link: https://hedgehog.blindambitionstudios.com https://hedgehog.blindambitionstudios.com
- tentacleuno 5y ago
  The humour in those threads are something else :-)

tpoacher 5y ago

I posted some random comment there a couple of weeks ago. And then I went back to see if anyone replied and the site was down :/

vhodges 5y ago

I know people that worked for the company that inspired Columbia Internet (which was located on Columbia Street in New Westminster and indeed I also worked at the company they became (unrelated to the ISP stuff) for while. There are a Mike that was on the team I was and suspect it's the same guy as 'Myke'. The person hosting ufies.org is a friend and former colleague from the same company as well.

novok 5y ago

Since UF is now over, is there a book / compiled archive of the comic that isn't a wayback machine copy?

ByteJockey 5y ago
If you're looking for a download, someone posted a mega link higher up in the thread. Convenience link: https://mega.nz/file/GKQQVbTY#1QmzfH7r2LAilAZU2RixI4yp-9IU6QS_-ppaHyXmVQU https://mega.nz/file/GKQQVbTY#1QmzfH7r2LAilAZU2RixI4yp-9IU6Q...

smudgy 5y ago

Freshmeat nostalgia and Userfriendly going dark on the same day. I'm so damn old... I just found out today that Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda rebooted Geeks in Space (a while back, it seems). Rob, Jeff and CowboyNeal's original run of GIS was one the first podcasts I ever listened to and it was glorious.

bdbz 5y ago

I wrote a spider many years back to download the comics and display them in a local interface. Somehow it survived several migrations and was on my synology. Here is an archive of the images if anybody wants them. https://mega.nz/file/GKQQVbTY#1QmzfH7r2LAilAZU2RixI4yp-9IU6QS_-ppaHyXmVQU https://mega.nz/file/GKQQVbTY#1QmzfH7r2LAilAZU2RixI4yp-9IU6Q... RIP UF, you were a big part of my childhood

mdaniel 5y ago
That sounds like something that would interest archive.org
- bdbz 5y ago
  I'll look into that. TBH I would be interested in migrating and hosting the website at my own expense.
sgarland 5y ago
Many thanks, I've got it on my NAS now. Fond memories of reading UF.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
UF also provided text transcripts which were searchable - did you get those too?
- bdbz 5y ago
  I was not aware that was a thing :( Maybe I can do something with OCR/ML
snarkerson 5y ago
I bought on of his books but it’s not the complete series.
Jaruzel 5y ago
Taken a copy - thank you! I'll probably throw up a mirror of the strips on my site at some point. For others, this archive is 1997 to 2013 and is images of the strip only. I stopped reading UF around that time I think. Like many things on the web, it's only really relatable to a person for a certain period of time, before you move on (XKCD was the same, used to regularly read it, now I hardly do.)

vax10 5y ago

This gives me a real sense of the past, I always looked forward to the comic strip in Linux Journal Magazine https://archive.org/details/linuxjournalpdfcollection/January%202012/ https://archive.org/details/linuxjournalpdfcollection/Januar...

jasoneckert 5y ago

We can only assume that the Web server has been eaten by a grue.

geocrasher 5y ago

Ebbeh!!

LambdaComplex 5y ago

Quake 3 Arena (from 1999) has a Dust Puppy easter egg: https://eeggs.com/items/4693.html https://eeggs.com/items/4693.html

bouncycastle 5y ago

My fav cartoon: 6000 BC: Ungh, Grrf, Booga 2000 AD: grep, awk, sed

mindcrime 5y ago

It's a sad day. Truly the "end of an era". Although really, I guess the original "era" ended when Illiad stopped writing new UF episodes. But still, for the site to go down really puts the exclamation point on it. RIP User Friendly. But hey, at least Sluggy Freelance seems to still be alive and kicking. I really need to go back and catch up on that series. Maybe time to start over from the beginning and re-read the entire thing. What an adventure that would be!

carlospwk 5y ago

Damn. RIP, lots of laughs a long time ago.

kethryvis 5y ago

User Friendly is why i am where i am today. It's why i got the degree i did, why i have the career i have, why i have the viewpoints on that career i had today. I owe my career to User Friendly. It's a really sad day for me.

raesene9 5y ago

Shame to see it go, I still have my Dust Puppy on the shelf and a signed User Friendly card, I got back at a conf. in the 90's.

stuntkite 5y ago

Oh no! My Windows has crashed! You need Loonix! Loonix is more reliable than crappy Windows. Man. I used to read that comic every day and still pull that ANIMATED USAR FREINDLEY MOVIE every few years. Remember Slashdot?

reiichiroh 5y ago

Good riddance finally. Almost as ugly as Mega Tokyo comic strip.