didn’t see it mentioned here, so a brief YSK.
stefano marinelli is working on #littleFedi, a self-hosted, single-binary activitypub/fediverse peer that hosts a mastodon-like instance with, in my mind, three killer features.
one, the thing can run on your premises completely, no need for paying for a VPS, domain name, nothing, bypasses NAT/CGNAT, encrypted comms to other instances by way of lighthouses that do the initial intros.
dos, the thing runs on something as light as a Pi zero 2W, with a miniscule memory footprint and immense CPU optimizations due to running on the weakest hardware there is (also running off SD storage).
finally, a blog-like view of your long-format tweets/toots/posts, naturally with replies appearing as comments.
original post introing the thing: https://littleone.littlefedi.social/@stefano/4252ae6f-b949-42f8-a021-fd2b698f8b37
no code available atm (coming soon) same goes for binaries. the first instance is at https://littleone.littlefedi.social/ if you want an invite code to check things out (the settings page’s got a lot of cool stuff), hit up stefano.
I am beyond stoked, this clears the two biggest hurdles for selfhosting your shit - the VPS/domain expense and hassle, and the hardware requirements for running it.
edit: missed that the website is up, explaining everything way better: https://littlefedi.org/
how does this compare to snac2 or gotosocial? (are there more like that?)
why is the source code not public?
Sounds great. Who’s stefano? Since I don’t know them and the source code is not published yet I am uncertain about this.
And can you explain what’s the lighthouses method to bypass NAT? Never heard of it. Seems like the model for this app is p2p-like more than “strict self-host” (similar to scuttlebutt and other projects), am I right?
Yeah. A binary without any sourcecode is a huge red flag
Does the UI work without JS? This is my biggest issue with most fediverse apps
The demo site seems to work without javascripts, and the main site’s “Why this exists” lists “an interface that works with JavaScript switched off” as one of the reasons.
What’s bad about JS? Genuinely asking
Security vulnerabilities
Why do people keep using… 🤔 Honestly, even besides the security aspect I’ve always wondered why use such an inefficient language
the thing can run on your premises completely
lighthouses that do the initial intros
Sounds like these lighthouses must be provided by somebody else which makes it not entirely on my premises anymore.
This looks really nice, fast and well considered. I’d love to understand more about these lighthouse nodes.
Can someone help a geezer out? I’ve stepped away (or gotten permabanned) from all social media except for this one. I barely understand the fediverse. If I don’t plan on starting my own lemmy or mastodon community and literally nobody cares I exist, is there a benefit for me to run a fedi server? Would it help the cause in some way?
