Differences

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--- fediverse-notes-servers [2026/04/07 13:27] – z428
+++ fediverse-notes-servers [2026/07/15 22:03] (current) – z428
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+==== Friendica ====
+Used to be my main vehicle on the Fediverse until 02/2026. Still fancy the platform and still keep that old single-user instance of mine around for ... reasons, but parted ways with it in day-to-day use.
+  * (+) Connects not just to ActivityPub but also to Tumblr, Bluesky, Diaspora - and a couple of others I don't use. This includes even odd use cases such as posting messages retrieved from e-mail systems / IMAP servers and likewise sharing articles to e-mail recipients.
+  * (+) Mostly supports Mastodon client API so there's a chance of re-using mobile apps like tusky, moshidon or fedilab on here.
+  * (+) Channels allow for providing pretty fine-grained sorting and filtering of posts, similar more to custom feeds in Bluesky than to mere "contact lists" in other platforms.
+  * (+) Community support in most cases is fast and helpful, both talking about instance admins and developers.
+  * (+) Timeline view, user interface, ... are much more capable of handling vast loads of communication specifically also longer posts, threads and forum-like conversations. This is macroblogging much more than microblogging and it's definitely good this way.
+  * (-) Friendica web client, albeit quite improved throughout the last couple of releases, has a bunch of shortcomings and glitches that really feel annoying at times, especially talking use on mobile devices. Some things still are tied to mouse-hover interactions and don't work on touch screens at all.
+  * (-) Although Mastodon client apps are supported, obviously features related to Friendica (such as sharing just to certain connectors or circles) aren't supported in there and most likely never will be. There's as of now no mobile app fully supporting these features.
+  * (-) Oddly enough and then again, some "late additions" to the Friendica feature set aren't available from the Friendica web interface at all. Example here: Setting visibilities to responses to other posts. Using any Mastodon-API-Client with Friendica, this is possible and seems to work but the Friendica web interface doesn't have any way to do so.
+  * (-) In some cases, Friendica has glitches that are extremely hard (not to say impossible) to recover if you're not an instance administrator, such as Tumblr or Bluesky connector getting stuck, lagging behind or otherwise misbehaving. In most cases, too, "just" running an instance managed by someone else doesn't help either; it seems the best way to run Friendica is being in full control of operating system, database, filesystem, webserver too, all along with the Friendica service itself. This isn't a good starting point.
+  * (-) Some limitations that are there aren't obvious. Like, Tumblr posts are mirrored but not responses or messages - because the Tumblr API doesn't support that but still it's not obvious. Same way, Bluesky direct messages don't come through, and Bluesky contacts appear to be in some way different to other contacts in example when it comes to adding them to circles.
+  * (-) In general and unfortunately, it seems Friendica development has massively slowed down the last couple of years. The latest stable release is 2025-12, released in Dec 2025. For a while, there was a two-release-per-year strategy. Now, the current RC, as of writing this in April 2026, is dubbed 2026-04RC. In the past, more than once there have been situations of odd errors introduced with one of the releases to keep features broken for half a year or more.
+  * (-) A difficult side-effect of the long development cycles is: Even with issues being marked as "fixed" in github, in most cases it essentially means they make it to the RC or dev branch which leaves even relevant fixes waiting there for quite a while so you're either left living with the issue or nudging your instance admin to go for an RC release (which might be a bad idea from other points of view) or go for a single-user instance with an RC release yourself, which is obviously not a good idea unless you have plenty of time at hand or this is a service you don't really need to be around but then again why bother at all?
+  * (-) All along with this, it seems Friendica has serious performance issues in circumstances that are hard to reproduce. In the end, my single-user instance consumed incredibly hefty amount of system ressources, even this way got stuck more than just once and apparently no one was really able to figure out why that happened. I also managed to take down the instance I feel grateful for hosting my data in between 2021 and 2025, several times, for similar reasons, and I suffered from performance degradations in both web interface and mobile apps repeatedly, in some cases it was possible to have these reproduced, but in the end none of them really have been resolved.
 ==== Mastodon ====
@@ Line 32: / Line 54: @@
   * (-) Export of data is somewhere in between broken and disabled. No way to take all your images elsewhere. Not even talking about re-importing these.
   * (-) The main developer is a ... difficult person, mildly put. Won't go into much more details here but safe to say this makes me stay away from everything he did or does for the time being.
-==== Friendica ====
-Used to be my main vehicle on the Fediverse until 02/2026. Still fancy the platform and still keep that old single-user instance of mine around for ... reasons, but parted ways with it in day-to-day use.
-  * (+) Connects not just to ActivityPub but also to Tumblr, Bluesky, Diaspora - and a couple of others I don't use. This includes even odd use cases such as posting messages retrieved from e-mail systems / IMAP servers and likewise sharing articles to e-mail recipients.
-  * (+) Mostly supports Mastodon client API so there's a chance of re-using mobile apps like tusky, moshidon or fedilab on here.
-  * (+) Channels allow for providing pretty fine-grained sorting and filtering of posts, similar more to custom feeds in Bluesky than to mere "contact lists" in other platforms.
-  * (+) Community support in most cases is fast and helpful, both talking about instance admins and developers.
-  * (+) Timeline view, user interface, ... are much more capable of handling vast loads of communication specifically also longer posts, threads and forum-like conversations. This is macroblogging much more than microblogging and it's definitely good this way.
-  * (-) Friendica web client, albeit quite improved throughout the last couple of releases, has a bunch of shortcomings and glitches that really feel annoying at times, especially talking use on mobile devices. Some things still are tied to mouse-hover interactions and don't work on touch screens at all.
-  * (-) Although Mastodon client apps are supported, obviously features related to Friendica (such as sharing just to certain connectors or circles) aren't supported in there and most likely never will be. There's as of now no mobile app fully supporting these features.
-  * (-) Oddly enough and then again, some "late additions" to the Friendica feature set aren't available from the Friendica web interface at all. Example here: Setting visibilities to responses to other posts. Using any Mastodon-API-Client with Friendica, this is possible and seems to work but the Friendica web interface doesn't have any way to do so.
-  * (-) In some cases, Friendica has glitches that are extremely hard (not to say impossible) to recover if you're not an instance administrator, such as Tumblr or Bluesky connector getting stuck, lagging behind or otherwise misbehaving. In most cases, too, "just" running an instance managed by someone else doesn't help either; it seems the best way to run Friendica is being in full control of operating system, database, filesystem, webserver too, all along with the Friendica service itself. This isn't a good starting point.
-  * (-) Some limitations that are there aren't obvious. Like, Tumblr posts are mirrored but not responses or messages - because the Tumblr API doesn't support that but still it's not obvious. Same way, Bluesky direct messages don't come through, and Bluesky contacts appear to be in some way different to other contacts in example when it comes to adding them to circles.
-  * (-) In general and unfortunately, it seems Friendica development has massively slowed down the last couple of years. The latest stable release is 2025-12, released in Dec 2025. For a while, there was a two-release-per-year strategy. Now, the current RC, as of writing this in April 2026, is dubbed 2026-04RC. In the past, more than once there have been situations of odd errors introduced with one of the releases to keep features broken for half a year or more.
-  * (-) A difficult side-effect of the long development cycles is: Even with issues being marked as "fixed" in github, in most cases it essentially means they make it to the RC or dev branch which leaves even relevant fixes waiting there for quite a while so you're either left living with the issue or nudging your instance admin to go for an RC release (which might be a bad idea from other points of view) or go for a single-user instance with an RC release yourself, which is obviously not a good idea unless you have plenty of time at hand or this is a service you don't really need to be around but then again why bother at all?
-  * (-) All along with this, it seems Friendica has serious performance issues in circumstances that are hard to reproduce. In the end, my single-user instance consumed incredibly hefty amount of system ressources, even this way got stuck more than just once and apparently no one was really able to figure out why that happened. I also managed to take down the instance I feel grateful for hosting my data in between 2021 and 2025, several times, for similar reasons, and I suffered from performance degradations in both web interface and mobile apps repeatedly, in some cases it was possible to have these reproduced, but in the end none of them really have been resolved.
 ==== Hubzilla ====