- If it runs Python and pip/pipx, and you can pull in the required packages via pip/pipx, it'll run Reticulum.

- On 32-bit x86 platforms it has to build the PyCA/cryptography module, but works fine after it does that.

- Reticulum supports a number physical interfaces, serial is one of them. It of course has the "RNode" intefaces for LoRa radios. For Ethernet, there is "AutoInterface" which uses IPv6 autoconfiguration for peer discovery and IPv6 UDP for transport but doesn't rely on DNS, DHCP, or anything else. If your PC, phone, or other involved devices on the same network have IPv6 enabled and no filtering is happening on layer 2 then it's dead simple - any device there will see announces from others and be able to transact with you not doing much more than spinning up MeshChat.

- Other interface types are TCP client, TCP server, IPv4 UDP, I2P, and a pipe interface. The pipe interface is interesting as it's basically stdin/stdout to an executable of your choice, so you can use that to make Reticulum available over really anything you could dream up, such as an SSH tunnel.

The only fully-functional stack currently available requires Python >= 3.8, which is the main limitation to where it will run. But there’s still a lot you can do with that!

all users need to be running the reticulum network stack to be able to send, receive, and route packets.

reticulum itself describes the network stack (like tcp/ip) and it has its own protocols like LXMF for messaging and LXST for streaming. applications can be built on top of these protocols.

it’s different than IP, instead of addresses, each node has an identity that’s a cryptographic key pair that you send messages to, the routing happens in the background regardless of network topology or diversity of link types.

you CAN send reticulum packets over a TCP/IP adapter and thus across the normal Internet (there are a lot of testnet and community nodes that are accessed this way), but the protocol also seamlessly bridges over any interface (lora, bluetooth, HAM radio, etc) that is attached to the node.

so like, there could be a message sent over lora to a base station that relays it to another server through the internet, then that server sends it out over a ham radio link to another computer somewhere else, etc.

all the message sender has to know is the pubkey of the node they want to talk to, and the network figures out how to establish a link.

128 hops maximum.

the prerolled binaries of the aforementioned software include the network stack and easy enough presets to find content from other nodes and people to talk to.

... urgently needed now ;)

I saw this too and immediately thought: well, they published this on GitHub which surely has a clause that grants it a license to use the code for training Copilot for Microsoft at a minimum, sooo should've published on another Git platform.