Another fresh Lemmy user here running for refuge from the Reddit collapse. Although in my case, before my 3rd party app got shut down I got permabanned from Reddit for daring to report obvious bot accounts reposting and interacting in bad faith… sigh.

This federated system is a little confusing, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. First time I’ve seen a mobile forum web interface not suck.

I suppose some lingering questions I have so far is

  • In the mobile site, how tf do I filter to specific communities for a more “reddit-Esque” curated front page? Right now it’s dumping EVERY post from every currently federated instance, and that’s quickly becoming a lot of content.
  • is running your own instance, to keep with the “email” analogy, preferable at this early stage in Lemmy’s growth? As I understand, it really helps with server load.
  • I’m considering making my own instance to focus on cars and trucks discussion , with internal communities dedicated to each brand similar to those on Reddit. However I’m not sure how to find out if an instance like that already exists. Google searching seems to return poor results for Lemmy instances at this stage. Is there some dedicated Lemmy community for advertising instances? And is advertising instances by sharing content considered “bad practice”?
  • Are the hardware requirements for a smaller Lemmy instance very high? I admittedly haven’t done that much research on it yet so please roast me for this question. I like to own my own hardware, so I have an Orange Pi 5, 8GB with a 512gb SSD I would commit to the instance if I can get my routing situation figured out.
  • Can registered accounts be transferred to a different instance?

Thanks everyone! Let’s hope this service can really take off in the future.

  • jonahMA
    7·
    2 years ago

    Welcome!

    • No, we do not do any curation. You can curate the feed yourself by subscribing to communities you’re interested in, and changing the front page from “All” to “Subscribed” (you can make Subscribed your default view in your settings: https://lemmy.one/settings)

    • Yes

    • https://join-lemmy.org/instances is the only list I’m aware of.

    • The requirements are not high, although I’m not sure whether ARM is officially supported, so YMMV with an Orange Pi 5.

    • No

    • empireOfLoveOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      Wow, that was a fast reply, and from the instance owner himself. Thanks for the welcome, Jonah!

      Damnit, I forgot not everything runs on ARM… I’ve been running Java minecraft servers for too long lol. I have repurposed office PC’s if x86 is required, although at that point I’d probably just go pay the $5/mo for a low spec cloud server somewhere.

      • jonahMA
        3·
        2 years ago

        I do think that the Docker images are available for ARM, it’s just the automatic Ansible scripts which might not support it IIRC, so if you’re comfortable with messing with it a bit I think you can do it. Otherwise yeah a small VPS should also work fine.

        • empireOfLoveOP
          1·
          2 years ago

          Yeah I don’t mind screwing with stuff like that. Docker is how I’d run it in the first place, just so much easier.

          I’ll experiment with it over the next couple weeks once I finish finals.

          • kiwi
            3·
            2 years ago

            If you try hosting on a pi please report back! I’m curious too if it would work.

            • empireOfLoveOP
              3·
              2 years ago

              I will certainly give it a try! I love ARM based SBC’s for doing little server tasks like this that really don’t deserve (or need) a full fledged x86 processor.

  • Ecksell
    5·
    2 years ago

    Welcome over! There is a huge surge incoming, so this should be fun. I’d be glad to join your cars and trucks instance when you have it up, as the proud owner of an WRX. Shoot me a link mate!

    • empireOfLoveOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      Fellow subaru enjoyer, You bet! I’ve still got a little ways before I’ll have the free time to mess with spinning up an instance but I’ll be sure to shoot you a DM once it’s up.

  • Nerd02@forum.basedcount.comEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Hi, welcome on board from one refugee to another. Yeah federations are indeed a bit confusing to wrap your head around. I like to think I’ve figured it out, but who knows…

    1. Not sure I understood what you mean. Can’t you just subscribe to the communities you care about? It’d be like joining a subreddit.
    2. Yes.
    3. Not sure if there are any better sites for this, personally I use https://browse.feddit.de/
    4. It should be pretty lightweight, though if you don’t have lots of RAM your user experience might be hurt a bit. I’ll relay this to the guy who’s hosting my instance, I’m not sure which config he’s rocking. But personally mine feels overloaded at times, so whatever I’ve got you might want a little more than that. Anyway, if you like the idea of owning the metal that’s fine but know that you can easily host a decently sized lemmy on a VPS for less than $10.
    5. Not that I know of, each instance has its own database where everything is contained. Posts and comments are synced among instrances using ActivityPub but I believe accounts only live on one server. In order to do that you’d need to manually access the database on both instances.
  • smartwater0897
    3·
    2 years ago

    The database is the heavy part from what I hear. You could probably run an instance for yourself on the orange pi though.

    It’s not possible to transfer accounts to different instances. You have to register from scratch and follow communities from scratch. But it takes like 5 minutes once you are approved.