this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023

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what’s the benefits of using Lemmy compared to the others? I found this picture on Google. (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Well they all use a different interface style. For example Lemmy is "Reddit like". Mastodon is "Twitter like". So just use whatever platform works best for you. You're on Lemmy right now so I would guess you're looking for a Reddit style. There's also kbin to serve the same, but they're having some problems federating right now. They may not offer the best user experience. kbin is newer and still in early development. Lemmy has a few years under its belt.

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

So is kbin part of lemmy? Or is it different like mastadon?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

So is kbin part of lemmy? Or is it different like mastadon?

Kbin is another Reddit like platform. All Fediverse platforms communicate using the ActivityPub protocol, but each platform has it's own development team. Right now ActivityPub is not seamless between platforms, for example Lemmy is not talking to Mastodon very well right now. The goal is for seamless communications between platforms, but that's not the case yet. It's just growing pains that should get worked out over time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

May be a controversial opinion but I don't think lemmy instances should talk to mastodon, I feel like twitter and reddit are two entirely separate platforms for entirely separate purposes and if you mix them together you kinda destroy that individualisation

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I'm not interested at all in microblogging.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

How would this work? If I'm on Lemmy I would be able to read Mastodon posts? Would they appear like Lemmy comments or what?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Right now, on Mastodon we can read Lemmy's posts.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Are you saying you can't read Kbin through Lemmy but the goal is to be able to?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

People at Kbin can also see our upvotes and downvotes (perfect for toxic stalkers...).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

We were about to read Kbin posts from Lemmy.ml just a week ago but I think the server updates might have caused federation issues cause I no longer see them on my feed.

But yes, you should be able to subscribe to Kbin "magazines" (their version of communities/subreddits) and see their posts from Lemmy and theoretically vice versa.

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

Similar UX but different project, just like how you can get stuff from Lemmy in your Mastodon feed.

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

So can we get stuff from mastodon in our feed? Also, I see Wordpress in there too, which isn’t a social network.

[–] Quills 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

As far as i know you can't see normal mastodon posts on lemmy, Kbin has that capacity but not lemmy

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Normal mastodon posts you can’t, but if they post a specific way then it’ll show up. Theres one in my comment history.

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

that's confusing but I think I get it

[–] 0x4E4F 1 points 2 years ago

It's because of the standards, what's considered a post and what a comment. Things are not crystal clear ATM, so federation is kinda messy.

[–] 0x4E4F 1 points 2 years ago

I think blog posts appear as posts and comments on the blog as comments... in wordpress I mean.

[–] Quills 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Different, just providing a more or less a similar experience making it more compatible to lemmy by nature, technical difficulties still exist tho, like it was said before, obviously, but that's normal, things are still in development

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Kbin also has a user karma system, which I want nothing to do with. I feel it's a system that was abused on reddit and didn't make anything better.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Huh, this would be the first I’ve heard of Wordpress leveraging ActivityPub.

[–] Quills 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It seems to have some addons or something like that that allow it to communicate with activitypub

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

Neat! Not that I use WordPress so it doesn’t matter to me, but interesting all the same.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Reminds me of all the linux distros.

I imagine the surge in the fediverse has the linux community frothing at the mouth. Moving away from privatized software to open source, a step closer to ushering in the mythical year of the linux desktop.

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

Linux has actually become measurably more popular over the past few years, recently cracking the 3% mark (actually 7% including Chrome OS). I know, doesn't sound like much, but keep in mind even sub-1% browser projects like Brave or Vivaldi are not only alive, but also rather well known and doing great... And Mozilla is co-defining internet standards with Firefox at 9%.

I think we can thank not only Chrome OS (which actually is a Linux desktop distro, no matter how you look at it), the Steam Deck, and finally Microsoft and Win11 for that trend lol

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

Thanks Raspberry Pi too

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

FOSS becoming mainstream would be so good for humanity's future...I think we're a long way off from that being more than a dream though.

I'll just keep doing my part by trying to convince my friends to go Linux though lol.

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

Maybe, but the scale is different. We're talking about a client-server application versus a whole operating system. The Fediverse has created new open source communities, but I think it's had minimal impact on existing ones. In other words wide scale adoption of the Fediverse may not significantly increase the popularity of Linux over any other OS. Though many instance admins are using a VPS so it could be a boon for server farms running on open source software.

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

If the whole fediverse thing gets to the mainstream, more people can start looking at ways to be less corporate-dependent in their digital lives, and maaaybe start considering Linux as their main OS.

I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but hey! people can dream I guess.

[–] 0x4E4F -1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The year of the Linux desktop will never happen. A few things are at play, but most notably, games and proprietery software that relies on Windows. MS really cemmented their stand with all of this in the 90's. While the *NIX wars were going on, they slowly swept the market away. This, and the fact that setting up things on a Windows install is in most cases, a lot easier than on Linux (at least knowledge wise). Next, Next, Next, Finish is a lot cheaper from an IT perspective than typing commands away in a terminal. They might pay for the licenses for the OS, but cosidering how cheap they are nowadays, that's nothing compared to how more you'd have to spend on consulting and IT labor if you're using Linux in your work environment. I'm not talking about IT or dev companies here, I'm talking about your every day Joe, a mechanic, a store, a marketing company, etc.

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

Games are much less of an issue nowadays, proton's kinda taken the wind out of Microsoft's sails on that one

The only hangup I think for anyone reasonably technical using it nowadays is Microsoft software intentionally being made incompatible which is always going to be the case unless/until Microsoft make a version of Windows that's running a Linux kernel under the hood

[–] 0x4E4F 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Proton, Wine, Lutris, Bottles... that all takes a lot of playing with, something that your average Windows user is not prepared to do. Those may be a viable alternative for older games that don't run on newer versions of Windows anyway, but for new titles, it's a PITA to configure all of the above to just run, let alone configure them to have optimal performance, as they do in Windows.

My guess is, this will never happen. Apple do the same to MS products, NTFS being a perfect example. It's protecting it's user base and those things will never change IMO. MS won't do it, neither will Apple. Windows might run a heavily modified Linux kernel in the future, but that will be it. Everything else, except the kernel will be closed source, which brings us again to the point I was trying to make, it's still gonna be hard to switch everything over to Linux. MS just dominates the desktop market. Everything is compatible with Windows and they have their own dev platforms, not to mention server lines, AD, etc.... things that are hard to replace in a production environment. People just wanna get their work done, none of them really care of what goes behind the scene. Not to mention the workflow, that will have to change as well, the tools included as well. Try and shift all of that to something that doesn't have the Windows logo in the menu button. Trust me, I've tried, it's hard as hell. Takes a lot of man hours and the pay is more or less the same as if I just did Windows installs on everything and just left people alone. If the pay was 2x or 3x the regular pay, yes, I would consider it again, but for a small percantage plus, no way.

In the end, everyone just shifted to Windows anyway. Users pushed management to revert back the decision stating "this just doesn't work" (there were growing pains, but most things were smoothed out), and they did, they bought Windows licenses again and all my hard work was in vain. Now, I just recommend the easy approach. Everything will most probably work out of the box and it would require a lot less of my time spent on something that in the near future will be abandoned as a solution (meaning I have to put in work again to revert everything to the way it was for the same pay).

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

I'm not suggesting it can happen with current tech, but as an example look at the state of gaming on Linux now compared to 5 years ago. I remember trying years ago and it just being basically impossible without hours of tinkering and now virtually every steam game just launches on Linux with no fuss

Just using that as an example that Linux can absolutely become more mainstream, I'd argue distros like mint, elementary and pop are better for people who basically only use a browser for their day to day anyway (which is already demonstrated by Chromebooks)

I'm also not suggesting we convince people to switch in the same way nobody went round convincing people to use Windows in the first place, I think at the moment the onus is on companies like system76 and framework to ship their machines with Linux by default, a lot of them right now let you cut a hefty chunk of the price off for Linux because no license fees which I think is absolutely the way to do it

[–] 0x4E4F 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Yeah, have to be honest, gaming has gotten A LOT easier on Linux now. Thanks to Valve of course, Linus was right after all, Valve will save the Linux desktop.

Installing Linux on a personal laptop for just browsing or music, video, movies, whatever (older laptops that just struggled with Win10 on them), yes, and I have done that for some of my customers (those that asked for a recommendation or just said "do whatever, just get it working"). But, in large production environments with software that is absolutely tightly tied with AD and MS, no way. I have done it, but the man hours were just... too much... and the pay was a few percent over my regular salary. I know I bit more than I could chew as soon as I said yes, but I really wanted to try to get things working with Linux. It was a challenge, I have to admit that, I like challenges, lol 😂. But was it worth it? Absolutely not. Custom wine patches, custom this custom that... I had to make my own custom repo with patches just to get things working, mod code, add new strings to search in the patch script in newer releases... it was a nightmare to be honest. That is not a 1 man job. Still, even if I had help, it's just not worth it. Hiring someone to do custom patches and maintain the repo vs. 1 or 2k USD to throw in Windows licenses... I mean, you get the idea. In the end, it's just cheaper to buy the damn licenses 🤷.

IDK about sustem76, we don't have that where I live. We do have lappys with Linux preinstalled, but as soon as someone buys one, they just ask me to install Windows on it 🤷. They're cheaper cuz you don't pay for the Windows license and afterwards I just use KMS38 on the Windows install 🤷.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

System76 are the people who make Pop! They make laptops designed to run Linux that come with pop preinstalled

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

I wish nomadic identities were more of a thing, then I might actually use other ActivityPub services.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago

This might be a rare case where blockchain is the correct solution.

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

Does it make sense to merge all of them into one “super app”?

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

It does not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

admins could roll deployments that are tightly integrated if they wanted now, just takes time to setup. I think most servers are dealing with the basics right now.

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

Didn't know nextcloud used activitypub, how does it federate? Had assumed it was just a self hosted alternative to Dropbox/OneDrive/whatever

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

The issue is the compatibility. You can follow Lemmy from Mastondon, but not vis-versa.

Lemmy is pretty dismissive of the rest of the fediverse.

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

I don't really agree, Lemmy made sure that posts+comments show up in Mastodon and that Mastodon users can post+comment to Lemmy.

More compatibility would be great though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Is there a rundown on what they're all like? Only familiar with Lemmy and Mastodon

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

Check out https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/ and filter by ActivityPub to see the many apps that use a similar protocol to Lemmy along with quick descriptions. Not all apps there will be well populated, but it will give you an overview of what some of the fedi apps do.

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