When using the official Mastodon app (as suggested in the “guide”) “instances” are not a factor at all (unless the user specifically goes out of their way). A new user could have never even heard of the term “instance” and the above steps would work fine.

You don’t just download the app, create an account, and go.

Actually with Mastodon this is literally how it works.

EDIT: I should say this is how it works now, it didn’t always used to be this way. The official Mastodon app used to ask the user to pick an instance, but for a number of years now it defaults every new account to mastodon.social unless they opt out. There was a big brouhah about centralization but the Mastodon devs felt it made for easier on boarding.

I visited once and it is really funny how you drive through normal looking suburbs thinking “there is no way we are anywhere near Mintaka III” then suddenly there it is.

Potentially unpopular protip: I’ve blocked most of the “prolific” posters. My entire feed was becoming repurposed memes from 2015.

I’m happy there are people out there dedicating time to keeping Lemmy “active” but that is not how I want to live my life.

I love being able to have the small-forum feeling of my home instance but also feeling connected to communities elsewhere.

TikTok → Reddit → Lemmy → …grass?

It’s definitely the first thing I thought of too

This is my not-safe-for-Reddit opinion but I thought the S1 Klingons were great, interesting and impressive.

I have a feeling even the bottom 10% of Europeans are still contributing more than the bottom 10% of someone in India or Botswana. This Wikipedia page says that the average EU citizen contributes 117% of the global average carbon emissions (for comparison Canada is 307% and USA is 285%).

I agree re: Fedora, especially the atomic varieties. I do think Zorin is good at what it is but it has a pretty specific use case.

Also, had no idea you were also in this community. Pleasant surprise.

Had the same thought, it’s always nice to encounter a civilized person of distinguished taste and culture out here in the wilds.

FTA:

In response to the closure of the library entrance to Canadians—who represent at least half of the library’s clientele—the Haskell did what libraries do: found a way to serve its community anyway. It opened a back door, allowing all Canadians to continue to access the library via a small storage room, without crossing the border. Haskell also set up a fundraising drive to renovate this entrance and make it more accessible, asking for $100,000. In under two weeks, it raised $170,000 and counting. The library is essential. The community and the country at large are responding.

Yes a very good point, the carbon footprint of the average Canadian is 10x that of the average Albanian.

Turns out good web design skills does not always translate into other skills.

Even without costs you will always have some faction of FOSS users who view UIs and user-friendliness to be something that can be optimized away (and will always, always, let you know their feelings on the topic).

It’s not a scam at all, Zorin is a good distro.

FTA:

In response to the closure of the library entrance to Canadians—who represent at least half of the library’s clientele—the Haskell did what libraries do: found a way to serve its community anyway. It opened a back door, allowing all Canadians to continue to access the library via a small storage room, without crossing the border. Haskell also set up a fundraising drive to renovate this entrance and make it more accessible, asking for $100,000. In under two weeks, it raised $170,000 and counting. The library is essential. The community and the country at large are responding.

If an instance has a lot of spam, admins tend to notice and block it. In the future it’s likely admins will have more tools too, but for now the system works pretty well.

Redlib is browser based and will work on Windows. Here is a list of instances.

10/10 this is the future of Linux

Totally agree

👍