I heard once that the case for which instance (for any federated app, be it Lemmy or Mastodon etc) on which to sign up is to choose based on “administration” not subject. That is to say, it is better to experience the fediverse through moderation and other administrative decisions than it is to do so on a server that is “subject based.” Thoughts?
How hard was it to set up an instance? I’m fairly decent with these things, and could spool up an shared server, but have never used Docker if that’s the best way.
I started my own as well (I also run my own Mastodon server) in a Kubernetes cluster. It took maybe 30 minutes to get everything up and running in my home lab setup.
If you’ve never used Docker before and wanted to give it a shot, there will be a learning curve, but it’s honestly very rewarding and depending on whether it’s relevant to you, it’s a good professional skill to have as well
I run my own Mastodon instance, but I haven’t been able to configure a lemmy instance. The readme is not currently as user-friendly as the one for Mastodon. I will try again sometime later if it’s improved.
I have my own server collocated in a data center so I spun up my instance in a virtual machine. All the infrastructure was ready to go and I’ve got a testing and production environment setup between my colo and my home lab. All that to say I’ve done things like this before so it wasn’t that difficult for me. I complied Lemmy from scratch which I do not recommend unless you really know what you’re doing. Docker would be the easiest way but I don’t really use it so I can’t recommend anything there.