I don’t use Arch , btw

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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: July 28th, 2024

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  • Mastodon is just like Threads : a hype , wait for the hype to end and you’ll see that it doesn’t offer something that would impress an ordinary person who isn’t a nerd or tech savvy enough to continue using it… What I’ll say now is more like random thoughts about federation and it applies to any federated service but this post inspired my thoughts so …

    The two best features I can think of for Mastodon are :

    • Open source: an excellent thing but it’s probably not important for an ordinary person who still uses the products of big companies just because they are “convenient” and “common” even when his data is the cost
    • federated: although it provides freedom to choose where you want to join, it creates a lot of confusion and inconvenience as well : I personally have somewhat specific interests and I usually tend to avoid public instances dedicated to “everything”, however, every time I decided to join a federated service I got the same confusion : “which instance should I choose?” , I had two accounts on Mastodon before I deleted one of them ( and I’ll probably delete the other soon ) and I felt this confusion the two times I created an account, I have two accounts on Lemmy and I felt this confusion the two times I created an account, one account on Peertube and it’s the same ( this was the most difficult of them honestly because Peertube’s filters are very bad and whenever I could find an instance that I considered good, it turns out that registration is closed, or needs approval), the same confusion also happened when I created an account on Kbin/Mbin , the same on Pixelfeed , the same when I searched for an instance of friendica and it will be the same when I think in the future to repeat the experience on any other federated service… Now, someone may come and say the famous sentence “it doesn’t matter which instance you choose, at the end you can follow anything from any instance” and honestly this sentence is a pure myth imho because … first : when you register an account in an instance, you will constantly notice the “local” section, which shows you what’s happening on the instance you are in , and it’ll form part of your experience in the instance depending on the instance itself and people on this instance , also , let’s suppose that a large number of annoying users existed on a popular instance and the moderation of this instance couldn’t solve the problem ( or didn’t do anything about this in the first place) , what might happen is that moderation of other instances might decide to defederate with this instance, and this might affect an ordinary user who has done nothing but joined the instance - and any other person who isn’t annoying but but ended up on this instance -, I know that this point is unreal currently but it might be real one day especially that some instances are known for not being tolerated with specific behaviors
    • Another confusion that might happen … I’ll explain it with my own experience : when I was still using my first Mastodon account, I left the account for a few months and then decided to return … but guess what happened ? I forgot which instance I signed up for in the first place ! fortunately, after two attempts in two different instances, I found the solution : I searched on a random instance for my Account (I still remember the username ) and was able to find it … I was lucky in this, but I can’t guarantee that everyone will be as lucky as me and will find a way to remember ( this is both a good and bad point for the federation , on the one hand I forgot where I registered because the instances are similar , and on the other hand I found the instance which I registered in using another instance )






  • You can try different distros online using distrosea.com , if you’re not planning to use a distro with no GUI ( like Arch , where everything need terminal ) then I would recommend focusing on trying to learn dealing with DE ( like Gnome , KDE , XFCE , SWAY , etc )… while testing make sure to do things like trying terminal , playing with settings , discovering things etc , and any obstacles/questions you find you can search for its answers and solutions…

    For resources, I mostly find answers and learn new things about linux from any websites I find in a web searching about Linux ( right now I only remember Linux TLDR , Arch wiki , Ubuntu forums , its foss - not only Linux focused -) , reddit , and linux@lemmy.ml community on Lemmy ( both news and questions ) For news , usually Linux community on lemmy and The Linux experiment channel on peertube ( iirc they have a YouTube channel too but I know nothing about it )

    Linux has more freedom and diversity than Windows, I also wanted to try something unusual compared to the routinized experience of Windows , I wanted also to get rid of Windows restrictions ( like the need to activate Windows to fully use it while I live in a country where there’s no way to activate it , ads and such things )