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?
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.