this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Is there any benefit to host my own instance?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

As someone who likes having control over their data and especially backups, and someone who normally enjoys self-hosting things, I honestly might do it. I'm not sure if I'd want to host a lemmy instance or kbin instance though, since I know they all federate together anyway. I may also end up waiting until the software is more mature too before looking into it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's awesome! Running my own social media instances has become a hobby for me.

Having my own Lemmy instance has felt fairly seamless versus using Lemmy.world, but there have been some kinks. For example, when attempting to subscribe to a new community, the server has to pull a bunch of data first. This takes several seconds, but the UI simply says "not found" -- and then after several seconds, the UI updates with the community you want to follow. I figured this out by tailing the logs.

Also, the installation was pretty damn easy, especially when compared to Mastodon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I'd maybe be interested in trying out self-hosting Mastodon at some point too, good to hear that Lemmy was easy to install though. I'm not too worried since I have quite a bit of Linux experience, I figure it probably won't be too bad to setup whatever social media instances I'm interested in checking out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, if you've got a decent amount of Linux experience, I don't think you'll have any issues. Mastodon's installation is well-documented and works. My only criticism is that it's a bit long and you have to be careful not to miss anything.

On the other hand, I recall installing Pixelfed back several months ago and having a difficult time. The documentation was lacking, and it required me to use Arch Linux, which I had never used. I was able to get it working, but eventually terminated the instance after a while because I was never using it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Oof, yeah, requiring someone to use Arch definitely seems like a steep requirement lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

LOL

It wasn't bad -- I just wasn't familiar with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Wait. I'm looking at the Pixelfed installation guide right now and it doesn't tell me to use Arch at all? Isn't it just a PHP app?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's awesome. This was several months ago when there was a link to some specific Arch Linux documentation that @[email protected] mentioned was the most complete. Sounds like it's been cleaned up.

Yeah, I think it is a PHP app.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

mm. Might have been a getting started from the ground up kind of setup guide and the author might be most familiar with that. But happily it seems like there's docker files in the main repo, including docker compose files, so that should make it quite easy to set up.

[–] cybersandwich 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yea, but then they can say "I use arch btw". That's what really matters in life.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

As someone that has spent the better part of the week mucking with it.... the kbin build docs have multiple gaps in the documentation and are functionally broken unless you have some better understanding of the setup. I WAS able to get the system built, but could never get it online. Best i got was 500 errors where the UI was up but there was a break somewhere in Redis, Postgres, Nginx etc. All the logs were clean though. This was with the docker method and build from source method on both Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 11 (which are what he specifically referenced)

Lemmy was much easier to setup using the ansible method. I have an instance online. Though im still working out the federation thing and some other kinks. I figured it would just reach out to Activity pub and federate with everyone but now it seems I have to build a static list...If if search for an instance i know exists I get a

404: couldnt_find_community

So there are some gaps but it seems much more mature. For example you cant mark your instance private AND have federation enabled. If you do that and restart the instance will fail to come up, but theres no warning or error in the UI.

I like the kbin dev better as people. But the lemmy code is definately more polished, even if the devs are turd sammiches.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well that's interesting, and somewhat like I expected but not really, I am surprised the setup process for kbin is that broken, although I guess it does make some sense since kbin is that much newer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah. I like the kbin dev as a person much better. And I can empathize with what he is going through. Its why i wanted to setup an instance and help spread the load. But I just couldnt get it working and didnt have the time to really dig in (I have a lot going on otherwise with work).

He did announce he is onboarding a sysadmin/netadmin to handle the stability and scaling issues so he can focus on commits which is good. Ill keep an eye out for updates and maybe migrate then.