I'm not here because Lemmy is a better alternative
I'm here because it's eventually going to be the better alternative.
FOSS by its nature, will keep on improving. And proprietary bloatware, by its nature, will only gonna get worse.
I'm here because it's eventually going to be the better alternative.
FOSS by its nature, will keep on improving. And proprietary bloatware, by its nature, will only gonna get worse.
I would not agree with the general statement about FOSS. Some commercial products absolutely do edge out the free ones. And I am not sure it is only the limited funding, seeing the usability issues with Linux. I think Linus Tech Tips video series was a nice insight.
But for social platforms I do not even see a different way. FOSS is a must, especially with the inherent bias of algorithms. Commercial third party clients still could be beneficial.
About Linux, I feel Con Kolivas, a former Linux kernel dev said is very accurate. There could be a bug in the kernel that causes desktop use case go to a crawl or freeze can be ignored for years, but Oracle reports there is a bug in the server usecase that causes a 0.5% of performance lost once per month and the same day it will be fixed.
Enterprise use simply eclipse the focus of the devs to regular people use. Which just only highlights even more why the desktop experience improved so rapidly when Valve decided they wanted Linux for gaming. Simply there wasn't anyone that cared for the end user experience and wasn't running their own fork (yes, I am talking about Google).
I'm about utility. Online social engagement is a need. People who can't connect need a way to connect. This is a public utility, a social service. It needs to be streamlined, free, and as open as possible to anyone who wishes to participate.
It is a human right to connect. We shouldn't hide it beind any paywall, ad, company, entity or outside will. People have a right to enter the room, speak and listen without being attacked by anything.
I think Linux usability is very good. The problem is the vast majority of Linux distros aren't great.
I switched to Fedora from windows a year or two ago, I'll never look back.
I do truly believe fediverse is the future. I also like it because it's a bit closer conceptually to old-school forums, each hosted as its own server. With a difference here of added convenience of inter-connectibility. It's also so cool to be the early adopter with the tech still a bit rough around the edges.
fediverse, eli5?
You are in your house, I am in mine. But we can still watch movies together through your window.
This is how I watch all my movies now, I had to find a way that Netflix can't crack down on
What I am not understanding is the concept of logging in another server. I created an account on feddit.it, can I use this account to login in a mastodon website? Or does it work the other way around, with me just using the feddit.it website (like I'm doing right now) to consume content from other instances? With the second option, if feddit.it goes down, my account is done, right?
That's what I think happens but I'd like to know too
Your account credentials are the keys to your house, you can only enter to your own house (server/instance) with your keys, but can watch through everyone's window (the owner of your house can block some specific windows tho).
So your second assessment is correct, and yeah I think if the server goes down your data in that instance may be lost. It shouldn't pass long time before some migration account feature (mastodon already has one).
based on the same concepts as email, you pick your provider (instance) and you can get messages from anyone using a provider supporting the protocol. The naming system is similar @<username>@instance and !<community>@instance
Hosting costs are going to bite everyone in the ass. That's the opportunity for corporations to step in and slowly fuck things up. So right now, if you look at the instances, there are a lot of topic overlap, like gaming. Now imagine down the road that say, Steam hosts their own gaming instance. People flock to it as a centralized discussion opportunity. We could easily end up back to a very corporate controlled situation.
I'm okay with the existence of the corporate run server in your example so long as alternatives remain available and that corporate server can't start requesting removal of "competition."
Some amount of centralization isn't bad, so long as people can still choose to be elsewhere.
A corporate run Lemmy server can remove competition by simply choosing not to federate with any other instance.
But that would be fine, wouldn't it? Then they wouldn't show up elsewhere, they would basically be using lemmy as a template to make a standalone website. If they want the general audience, they would have to create a general experience that is better than being connected to all the other servers, and that would be a lot of work.
But maybe I've misunderstood it, because I'm new to all this.
This
The year of the fediverse can't come soon enough
It should come right after year of the Linux.
Then we're doomed. I use linux (Fedora) as my daily drive, but I don't see it becoming more popular than Windows in the near future.
The Linux Desktop has been improving by leaps and bounds over the last few years.
More popular than the OS with majority market share is an unrealistically high bar for success. I could totally see linux become a mainstream desktop OS at some point.
Gaming is the biggest thing that prevents me from switching entirely to Linux, unfortunately
It was my main concern, so I dualboot (my main drive 500gb SSD runs Fedora while I have another SSD of 1TB with Windows 10).
Most games I play are running flawless on fedora (rn I'm playing No Mans Sky), as most Steam Games (you can check protondb for your favorite titles) and I've been more than a month without booting windows, but other titles as Fortnite can't run on Linux.
For your games on Epic and GOG you can use Heroic Launcher. Gaming on Linux is getting easier on daily basis.