This probably won’t work for everyone, but whenever I’m learning or trying out something new and unfamiliar, I always tend to follow the philosophy of “Just jump straight into the deep end and you have no choice but to swim”.
So for those thinking of trying out Lemmy/Fediverse. I suggest trying to get your own instance running. It’ll get you more familiar with what Lemmy is and how it works (at least on a high level). Its also really rewarding when you get it all up and running, it becomes something more personal to you since you took the time and effort (instead of just clicking sign up on some instance).
But again, that just how I prefer doing things. To each their own.
You don’t need any special hardware. I have my instance running on 1 CPU and 2GB of RAM just fine (granted, its just me there so there isn’t really any massive load).
So yes, you can use your PC if you want. The only thing I’d say is that if you plan to have your instance federated (i.e. make posts from it, message people etc), you’d want to have it running all the time. Otherwise, if your PC is down and Lemmy isn’t running, your images and posts might not show up properly for people on other instances.
Which is why most people prefer to rent a server or VPS (virtual private server, which is usually cheaper). Since you can have the server running 24/7.
Other than that, you need a domain name. Again there are websites that can give you free domain names. But in my case I prefer to just buy a domain.
If you check out https://join-lemmy.org/, there’s “Run a Server” option which goes over the steps.
Which is why most people prefer to rent a server or VPS (virtual private server, which is usually cheaper). Since you can have the server running 24/7.
That’s probably the best solution. You can rent a base VPS pretty cheap which is perfectly adequate if you’re not looking to support a lot of users. That way you get a static IP, high speed connection, and 24/7 uptime with no fuss.
yeah, you should have a server for this. you will probably nnoy people when your instance goes offline, comes up again repeatedly. Also you’d need to fight with port forwarding dns etc on your local internet connection.
I think it’ll also annoy people when your instance is invaded by spam bots.
People should feel free to set one up, but I don’t think it is something most people should consider just because they haven’t figured out how to subscribe to a community on another instance. This seems more like a neat project for people who already know how to use the Linux command line than a tip for people who are thinking of joining an instance for the first time.
I’m no expert so don’t quote me on this, but if you’re planning on low user numbers (say yourself and a couple of friends) a Pi setup should be more than sufficient.
Funnily enough, my first Lemmy instance was running on my Raspberry Pi. Ran fine actually! (You just need to make sure you’re running the ARM64 image)
The only reason I switched to a VPS is because I had a very complicated setup for my RaspberryPi. Basically, I didn’t want to expose any ports on my home router to the internet. So I was using a VPN with port-forwarding. The problem was that the VPN randomly assigns the port to access the device. So I had to map whatever port they gave me to 443 (for SSL). It did work kind of. I had HTTPS working, but I would need to append the port to the URL (e.g. https://my-domain.com:57493), which didn’t work well with Lemmy for federation. So I just decided to get a VPS instead 😅
TL;DR
I had Lemmy running on a Pi, but my setup was too convoluted, so I switched to VPS.
Same, been using Lemmy for a few days now and I’m still finding new things and new communities. There’s just this charm of finding out new stuff and discovering a new platform.
I’m also running my own instance (via DigitalOcean). Looks like it’ll cost me something like $5 per month. More than happy to be paying a nominal fee like that for having no admins control my experience
FYI to anyone finding this, the Ansible deployment was genuinely very simple to get running. I spent a day frustrated with Docker and then tried Ansible and it did everything seamlessly: installed lemmy, postgresql, and let’s encrypt
Yeah it costs me about the same for my instance, I’m using https://1984.hosting/. I actually didn’t use the Ansible script for my setup, I just configured it myself with Docker. It was a little more involved, but I think I have a decent grasp of how it all fits together having configured it myself.
This probably won’t work for everyone, but whenever I’m learning or trying out something new and unfamiliar, I always tend to follow the philosophy of “Just jump straight into the deep end and you have no choice but to swim”.
So for those thinking of trying out Lemmy/Fediverse. I suggest trying to get your own instance running. It’ll get you more familiar with what Lemmy is and how it works (at least on a high level). Its also really rewarding when you get it all up and running, it becomes something more personal to you since you took the time and effort (instead of just clicking sign up on some instance).
But again, that just how I prefer doing things. To each their own.
Do we need like special hardware for it or can I use my PC or what do I need lol
You don’t need any special hardware. I have my instance running on 1 CPU and 2GB of RAM just fine (granted, its just me there so there isn’t really any massive load).
So yes, you can use your PC if you want. The only thing I’d say is that if you plan to have your instance federated (i.e. make posts from it, message people etc), you’d want to have it running all the time. Otherwise, if your PC is down and Lemmy isn’t running, your images and posts might not show up properly for people on other instances.
Which is why most people prefer to rent a server or VPS (virtual private server, which is usually cheaper). Since you can have the server running 24/7.
Other than that, you need a domain name. Again there are websites that can give you free domain names. But in my case I prefer to just buy a domain.
If you check out https://join-lemmy.org/, there’s “Run a Server” option which goes over the steps.
That’s probably the best solution. You can rent a base VPS pretty cheap which is perfectly adequate if you’re not looking to support a lot of users. That way you get a static IP, high speed connection, and 24/7 uptime with no fuss.
yeah, you should have a server for this. you will probably nnoy people when your instance goes offline, comes up again repeatedly. Also you’d need to fight with port forwarding dns etc on your local internet connection.
I think it’ll also annoy people when your instance is invaded by spam bots.
People should feel free to set one up, but I don’t think it is something most people should consider just because they haven’t figured out how to subscribe to a community on another instance. This seems more like a neat project for people who already know how to use the Linux command line than a tip for people who are thinking of joining an instance for the first time.
Oh hell yeah, thank you for the good response! I’ll definitely look into this :)
I Wonder if a raspberry pi would work for this.
I’m no expert so don’t quote me on this, but if you’re planning on low user numbers (say yourself and a couple of friends) a Pi setup should be more than sufficient.
Funnily enough, my first Lemmy instance was running on my Raspberry Pi. Ran fine actually! (You just need to make sure you’re running the ARM64 image)
The only reason I switched to a VPS is because I had a very complicated setup for my RaspberryPi. Basically, I didn’t want to expose any ports on my home router to the internet. So I was using a VPN with port-forwarding. The problem was that the VPN randomly assigns the port to access the device. So I had to map whatever port they gave me to 443 (for SSL). It did work kind of. I had HTTPS working, but I would need to append the port to the URL (e.g. https://my-domain.com:57493), which didn’t work well with Lemmy for federation. So I just decided to get a VPS instead 😅
TL;DR I had Lemmy running on a Pi, but my setup was too convoluted, so I switched to VPS.
Same, been using Lemmy for a few days now and I’m still finding new things and new communities. There’s just this charm of finding out new stuff and discovering a new platform.
I’m also running my own instance (via DigitalOcean). Looks like it’ll cost me something like $5 per month. More than happy to be paying a nominal fee like that for having no admins control my experience
FYI to anyone finding this, the Ansible deployment was genuinely very simple to get running. I spent a day frustrated with Docker and then tried Ansible and it did everything seamlessly: installed lemmy, postgresql, and let’s encrypt
Yeah it costs me about the same for my instance, I’m using https://1984.hosting/. I actually didn’t use the Ansible script for my setup, I just configured it myself with Docker. It was a little more involved, but I think I have a decent grasp of how it all fits together having configured it myself.