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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"> <title>Pleroma Blog</title> <id>https://pleroma.social/blog</id> <link href="https://pleroma.social/blog"/> <link href="https://pleroma.social/blog/feed.xml" rel="self"/> <updated>2023-10-16T18:01:34Z</updated> <entry> <title>We got a grant from NLNet!</title> <published>2023-10-16 15:27 UTC+2</published> <updated>2023-10-16T18:01:34Z</updated> <link rel="alternate" href="https://pleroma.social/blog/2023/10/16/nlnet-grant/"/> <id>https://pleroma.social/blog/2023/10/16/nlnet-grant/</id> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Hi, HJ here. After spring’s disaster and previous years of mismanagement and never-ending drama some folks in pleroma-dev have been pretty demotivated and burned out. Having pleroma as a side “weekend warrior” kind of deal doesn’t help it either, as most of us have jobs/schools and other stuff to do and people would rather spend weekend relaxing. not to mention, I personally would really love working on Pleroma fulltime, but alas it doesn’t pay bills. After seeing a whole bunch of fediverse projects on NLnet I thought “why the heck not” and with the rest of dev community’s blessing, send the application. Several months and bunch of paperwork later we got approved.</p> <p>And here it is: <a href="https://nlnet.nl/project/Pleroma/">https://nlnet.nl/project/Pleroma/</a></p> <p>Since we have somewhat a history of being not-entirely-transparent about being financed by someone let’s rectify this right now, in a bit of a QnA format.</p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> Is this another (hostile) takeover?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> No. At least I hope it doesn’t come as such. I just want people to be able to spend more time working on project. I don’t intend on telling people what to do and project direction is really up to community’s decision. </p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> How much?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> Around 30k€ for a year. </p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> Did someone get a briefcase full of cash and now distributes it along the devs?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> No, we basically got a signed <em>promise</em> that we’ll receive the money, if we complete the <em>tasks</em>, whomever done it can ask for pay for that task. </p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> So it is like a bounty program?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> Not really, since only people “on the list” can do that. The list is flexible and we can add people there but it also means we need to know your official name and address. This is really just for the suits, so that EU who gives money to NLNet knows they aren’t just taking money for themselves through relatives etc. </p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> What are the “tasks” you talk about? Does this mean EU or NLNet tells you what to do?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> No, the tasks were defined by ourselves (mostly me with help of other members), split into smaller milestones. According to an NLNet representative it’s philanthropy, they can’t and won’t make demands we do specific tasks they want, they can still suggest things and try out software themselves though, much like anybody. And we not obligated to finish those tasks within time frame either - it just means we don’t get the money. Financing could be extended though. </p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> What are the tasks you defined exactly?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> In no particular order those are: </p> <ul> <li>Admin dashboard in PleromaFE</li> <li>Improved mobile experience (PWA, performance improvements, UI scale, settings sync etc)</li> <li>Chats improvements (ability to display (DM) threads as chats, shoutbox improvements)</li> <li>Instance customization and QoL</li> <li>Personal Data and Experience management (managing your uploads, timed mutes, regex blocks, username changes, expiring posts etc)<br/></li> </ul> <p>They are split into various smaller tasks, listing all of them here would be too much, might need another post or a page. </p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> Who’s on “the list”?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> Currently it’s me (HJ), tusooa, lanodan. I act as a manager for this whole thing, which means I also have to approve the payment requests, I have to approve adding people to the list etc. </p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> Is the list of tasks and people set in stone?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> No, everything is amendable. No I don’t know exactly how amendable it is? </p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> Does this mean those issues are ALL you work on?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> No, we still have our duty to fix the bugs and everyone free to work whatever they want. I really wish (and it was my initial pitch/grant size estimate) to just give people small “salary” per month to cover the rent and let them do whatever but that’s just not how it works. </p> <p><strong>Q:</strong> So you’re being financed now, I can stop donating?<br/> <strong>A:</strong> That is up to you. Donations and support is always welcome and never mandatory. Your donations did help me personally once at least, so there’s that. </p> <p>This is just a short PSA/overview for sake of transparency, more details are/will be in the inter-team communications (IRC/gitlab). If you have any questions - contact me at <a href="https://post.ebin.club/users/hj">https://post.ebin.club/users/hj</a> or <a href="https://shigusegubu.club/users/hj">https://shigusegubu.club/users/hj</a></p> <p>T. HJ</p> </div> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>The Big Pleroma and Fediverse FAQ Part 1 - Beginner Questions</title> <published>2021-01-13 19:35 UTC</published> <updated>2021-08-07T18:26:47+02:00</updated> <link rel="alternate" href="https://pleroma.social/blog/2021/01/13/the-big-pleroma-and-fediverse-faq/"/> <id>https://pleroma.social/blog/2021/01/13/the-big-pleroma-and-fediverse-faq/</id> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Recent events surrounding social media have made many people think about leaving the currently dominant platforms. If you are looking for alternatives, you’ll inevitably come across the term ‘Fediverse’. But what is the Fediverse and why should you use it?</p> <p>In this first in a series of FAQs, I’ll try to answer questions that a total beginner might have. In later installments, I’ll answer more questions about the technical details and about Pleroma specifics.</p> <p>I hope this will help you along on your way to the Fediverse!</p> <h3 id="what-is-the-fediverse">What is the Fediverse?</h3> <p>The Fediverse is a network of websites that talk with each other using a common language - <a href="https://activitypub.rocks">ActivityPub</a>. This means users of those websites can interact with each other no matter what service they use. Imagine commenting on a YouTube video with your Facebook account, or having your Twitter friends comment on your Instagram posts! The Fediverse has alternatives for all of these old social media platforms. There is Mastodon and Pleroma for Twitter-style microblogs, PeerTube to host your videos, PixelFed to show off your photos and many, many more.</p> <p>To put it simply, it’s as if there were a thousand Twitters, a thousand Facebooks, a thousand YouTubes, but they could all talk to each other and you would not need an account on each one.</p> <h3 id="what-are-instances">What are Instances?</h3> <p>On the Fediverse, domains that run ActivityPub servers are called “instances”. For example, lain.com and mastodon.social are instances. You can also say ‘site’, ‘server’ or ‘node’. All instances together make up the whole Fediverse.</p> <p>These instances are where users sign up and interact with the fediverse. In general, you only need an account on a single instance, but there’s nothing that stops you from making many.</p> <h3 id="what-is-pleroma">What is Pleroma?</h3> <p>Pleroma is the best<sup id="fnref1"><a href="#fn1" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> ActivityPub software there is for general Twitter-style social media. Low on resource requirements and with several web frontends and mobile apps, it’ll work well for any kind of community you want to create without breaking the bank. It’s also perfect for self-hosters who want to run a one-person setup.</p> <p>For users, it has a few additional features that many other ActivityPub servers lack, like chats between users and emoji reactions.</p> <h3 id="so-its-like-twitter">So it’s like Twitter?</h3> <p>Yeah it’s a lot like Twitter, but much more flexible.</p> <h3 id="on-twitter-i-am-coolkitty420.-what-would-my-fediverse-handle-look-like">On Twitter I am @coolkitty420. What would my fediverse handle look like?</h3> <p>On Twitter, handles are just the username. On the Fediverse, the domain name is added to your name so it looks more like an email address. If you would make your account at coolkitty.zone, your full fediverse handle would be @<a href="mailto:coolkitty420@coolkitty.zone">coolkitty420@coolkitty.zone</a>.</p> <p>If Twitter ever implemented ActivityPub (who knows), your Twitter handle would be @<a href="mailto:coolkitty420@twitter.com">coolkitty420@twitter.com</a>.</p> <h3 id="is-the-fediverse-only-for-twitter-like-social-networking">Is the Fediverse only for Twitter-like social networking?</h3> <p>Not at all! There’s also a YouTube-like video hosting software called <a href="https://joinpeertube.org/">PeerTube</a>, <a href="https://pixelfed.org/">Pixelfed</a> for the Instagram crowd and many many more. And because they all speak the ActivityPub standard, you don’t need to make an account on a PeerTube server to comment on a video - you can just use your existing Pleroma account.</p> <h3 id="i-already-have-a-twitterfacebookmyspace-account.-whats-better-about-the-fediverse">I already have a Twitter/Facebook/MySpace account. What’s better about the Fediverse?</h3> <p>Many of the advantages of the Fediverse over old social media lie in its decentralized nature. It enables the fediverse to ‘square the circle’ of moderation and free expression on a massive network because moderation decisions happen locally on a server and not globally on the network. This means that:</p> <ol> <li>Your server can freely decide which other servers it wants to block. From the viewpoint of your server, that other instance is gone.</li> <li>If your server is blocked from other people’s servers, you can still post on your own server and federate with servers who haven’t blocked you. So a moderation decision on another instance does not affect you very much.</li> </ol> <p>This way, each server can have moderation policies its users want while still communicating with the rest of the fediverse. </p> <p>Another advantage of this is that servers usually form a true community of like-minded users. With servers being cheap to run, this also practically eliminates the need to run ads to finance a server, as there are usually other monetization strategies.</p> <h3 id="what-if-a-hosting-provider-just-pulls-the-plug-to-kill-the-fediverse">What if a hosting provider just ‘pulls the plug’ to kill the Fediverse?</h3> <p>If a server hosts something that is illegal or against provider’s terms of service, it may be shut down. But that barely affects the network as a whole since it would only be one server out of thousands. A network-wide shutdown is not possible.</p> <p>This is a much more effective way to punish bad actors without significant collateral damage that comes with shutting down centralized social networks. Most of those are shut down because of a few perpetrators but inconvenience many unrelated users.</p> <h3 id="so-no-ads-but-how-does-the-fediverse-make-money-then">So no ads… But how does the Fediverse make money, then?</h3> <p>‘The Fediverse’ itself doesn’t need to make money because it is simply a network of independent servers. Those who run the servers need to cover the related costs. Here are a few ways they can do that:</p> <ol> <li>Collect user donations.</li> <li>Charge for sign-ups.</li> <li>Cross-finance from a service that does make money. For example, a chess club could finance their server out of collected membership fees.</li> <li>Run out of one’s own pocket as a hobby. Fediverse servers are cheap enough for that.</li> <li>Indeed, a server could even run ads to finance itself. To my knowledge, there’s no server that does that at the moment.</li> </ol> <h3 id="if-i-want-to-run-my-own-server-how-expensive-is-that">If I want to run my own server, how expensive is that?</h3> <p>This varies depending on how many users you want to support, but as a point of reference, a Pleroma server for a small group (under 50 people) runs fine on a system with 2 gigabytes of RAM and one CPU core. A server like this can be rented for €3/$4 a month. You could also run a server on Raspberry Pi 4, which costs around €50/$55 (model with 4 gigabytes of RAM).</p> <p>Here’s our <a href="https://docs.pleroma.social/backend/installation/otp_en/">installation guide</a> waiting for you to try it out!</p> <h3 id="if-i-dont-want-to-run-my-own-server-how-can-i-join">If I don’t want to run my own server, how can I join?</h3> <p>If you already have a friend who is using the fediverse, it is probably best to join the same server and learn how everything works. If you are truly lost, here are a few recommended Pleroma instances you can check out:</p> <ol> <li><a href="https://outerheaven.club/about">Outerheaven.club</a></li> <li><a href="https://stereophonic.space/about">Stereophonic.space</a></li> <li><a href="https://shitposter.club/about">Shitposter.club</a></li> </ol> <p>We are also working on a beginner instance that you can use to try out Pleroma and see if it is for you. It is not quite ready yet, so stay tuned.</p> <div class="footnotes"> <hr/> <ol> <li id="fn1"> <p>Source: Lain, founder of Pleroma <a href="#fnref1" rev="footnote">↩</a></p> </li> </ol> </div> </div> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>Releasing Pleroma 2.1.0</title> <published>2020-08-28 1:00 UTC</published> <updated>2021-08-07T21:50:03+02:00</updated> <link rel="alternate" href="https://pleroma.social/blog/2020/08/28/releasing-pleroma-2-1-0/"/> <id>https://pleroma.social/blog/2020/08/28/releasing-pleroma-2-1-0/</id> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p><img src="/images/pleroma_tan_2.1_cofe.png" alt="" /> </p> <p>Half a year after Pleroma 2.0, today we are releasing our next big version, Pleroma 2.1. Doesn’t sound like that much more, but it’s full of new features and fixes! Keep reading on to find out what we baked for you.</p> <h2 id="chats">Chats!</h2> <p><img src="/images/pleroma_2.1_chat_screenshot.png" alt="" /></p> <p>The most prominent feature in 2.1 are the all-new Chats. You can instantly message your friends (and enemies) in a one-to-one chat directly inside Pleroma now - no more “DM for discord”!</p> <p>This feature is completely different from the existing direct messaging system, which proved to be cumbersome and easy to get wrong. If you want to get the whole story, you can check out this Merge Request, but the main point is that these Chats will feel and behave like the chats you are used to from other instant messaging systems like XMPP, Matrix or WhatsApp.</p> <p>For now, we do not have group chats (which will require group support) or end-to-end encryption (check out my blog post about that topic for more info), but these are on the horizon.</p> <p>Try it out with anyone else who is running Pleroma 2.1 or a recent version of Honk. Or just message me at @<a href="mailto:lain@lain.com">lain@lain.com</a>!</p> <h2 id="more-backend-stuff">More backend stuff!</h2> <p>Pleroma 2.1 brings more configuration options for admins, like fine-grained restrictions of timelines for registered users and guests, a ‘by approval’ registrations mode and an easy way to install and manage different frontends.</p> <p>If you are an emoji fan, you might want to check out our new <code>EmojiStealPolicy</code> which automatically populates your local emoji collection by pulling them from friendly instances.</p> <p>We also now added a by-default MRF policy that will prevent very old posts from showing up in your timeline when they freshly arrive. While this was not a bug, it did confuse many users who didn’t know the reason why it happened.</p> <p>Under the hood, we rewrote most of our code relating to activity ingestion. We also rewrote our HTML parsing library once again, to make it even better. Our planned new HTTP client, however, did not get ready for this release. We hope we can bring it to you in the next one!</p> <p>As always, if you want to see the full picture, check out the changelog.</p> <h2 id="frontend-changes">Frontend changes</h2> <p><img src="/images/pleroma_2.1_timelines.png" alt="" /></p> <p>As you can see, the frontend changed a bit! Our navigation panel on the left side became quite crowded, so we slimmed it down a bit. There’s now only one ‘Timeline’ link. You can select the different kinds of timelines in a dropdown menu on the timeline itself now.</p> <p>As always, there are many many more changes and fixes. Check out the PleromaFE changelog if you want to learn more.</p> <h2 id="whats-coming-in-2.1">What’s coming in 2.1++</h2> <p>We’re quite happy with this release, but there are some things that are close to done but didn’t quite make it this time:</p> <ul> <li>Virtual scrolling for better frontend performance</li> <li>A websocket-based federation transport for faster and more efficient federation</li> <li>User-selectable frontends</li> <li>A thumbnailing media proxy that will save you lots of data</li> <li>Rich tooltips for user profiles</li> <li>Theming and settings improvements</li> </ul> <p>We’ll be working hard on these and will try to release them soon!</p> <p>And one more thing, of course…</p> <p><img src="/images/groups.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>Enjoy Pleroma 2.1!</p> </div> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>Releasing Pleroma 2.0.0</title> <published>2020-03-08 10:52 UTC</published> <updated>2021-08-07T21:50:03+02:00</updated> <link rel="alternate" href="https://pleroma.social/blog/2020/03/08/releasing-pleroma-2-0-0/"/> <id>https://pleroma.social/blog/2020/03/08/releasing-pleroma-2-0-0/</id> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p><img src="/images/pleroma_tan_2.0_nac.jpg" alt="" /> </p> <p>Long-awaited and finally ready, just in time for <del>FOSDEM</del> International Women’s Day, Pleroma 2.0.0 is here! There have been a lot of changes, including breaking ones, so let me give you a quick tour of this release. </p> <h2 id="performance">Performance</h2> <p>If you read <a href="https://blog.soykaf.com">my blog</a> in the last few weeks, you’ve noticed that I have been analyzing Pleroma database performance. I’m happy to report that I found a lot of places to optimize, and a few settings have made their way into this release. There’s nothing you have to besides updating Pleroma to activate those. This should lead to more consistent query times and less timeouts. If you want to read all the details, check out <a href="https://blog.soykaf.com/post/postgresql-elixir-troubles/">this article</a>.</p> <p>The Pleroma frontend has ALSO received a huge performance boost by rewriting one of the libraries we used. If you encountered slow and stuttering behavior in the past, please try it out again. Here as well we will continue to optimize performance in upcoming releases.</p> <h2 id="emoji-reactions">Emoji Reactions</h2> <p><img src="/images/emoji_reactions.png" alt="" /></p> <p>Nobody asked, and we listened. You can now react with any (well, mostly any) Unicode emoji to any post. These reactions are not the same as likes, so feel free to use them in any situation where they are fun! There is some compatibility with <a href="https://github.com/syuilo/misskey">Misskey</a> and <a href="https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk">Honk</a> (although reactions are called ‘badonks’ there), and people are working on mobile app support as well.</p> <p>Don’t worry, we want custom emoji reactions as well, but they will have to wait for another release :)</p> <h2 id="dropping-ostatus-support">Dropping OStatus support</h2> <p>Pleroma started as an alternative frontend for <a href="https://gnusocial.network/">GNU Social</a>, and it used its OStatus protocol for communication between instances, just like Mastodon. Internally, Pleroma has been always been built on ActivityPub and the concepts don’t always map cleanly between those two. With time, OStatus became used less and less on the network, which led to a few security issues in our OStatus code slipping through because that code path was barely used and looked at.</p> <p>In 2.0.0, we are removing support for OStatus federation and only federate over ActivityPub now. This was not an easy decision and we made it for the following reasons.</p> <ol> <li>OStatus is barely used on the network anymore.</li> <li>GNU Social can by now use ActivityPub, see <a href="https://notabug.org/diogo/gnu-social">this repo</a></li> <li>OStatus was a constant source of bugs and security issues for us</li> <li>Removing OStatus greatly simplifies the federation code</li> </ol> <p>We always tried to not leave GNU Social instances behind, so we waited until GNU Social supported ActivityPub until we made this decision. Still, if you have friends on non-ActivityPub GNU Social instances, you won’t be able to reach them until their servers get updated.</p> <h2 id="admin-improvements">Admin Improvements</h2> <p><img src="/images/admin_fe.png" alt="" /></p> <p>Many Pleroma users ask the question: Why do I have to edit configuration files to manage my instance? Well, that won’t be an issue anymore from 2.0.0 on.</p> <p>Our Admin frontend received a lot of love for this release. We now support storing your configuration in the database, so that you should be able to manage your instance without having to edit configuration files. This is the first release in which we support this method of running your instance, so there might still be some rough edges. Please read the <a href="https://docs-develop.pleroma.social/backend/administration/CLI_tasks/config/">documentation</a> before using it!</p> <h2 id="many-more-small-fixes-and-additions">Many more small fixes and additions</h2> <p>From a static frontend over themes 2.0 to rate limiter changes, there’s lots of small stuff that changed in 2.0.0. If you do the update, please check the <a href="/announcements/2020/03/08/pleroma-major-release-2-0-0/">changelog</a>, especiall the parts that say <strong>breaking</strong>! You might have to make some small adjustments to your existing configuration files.</p> <h2 id="towards-3.0">Towards 3.0</h2> <p><img src="/images/pleroma_tan_2.0_hakui.png" alt="" width="350" height="350" /> </p> <p>If there’s one thing about 2.0.0 I’m not happy about, it’s that it took too long to release, tempting server admins to switch to the unstable branch (don’t do it!). Our plan for the future is to do actual feature releases more often. This will require some more planning on our side, but it should be worth it. We already have a lot of interesting features in the pipeline, like a new, faster federation transport and switchable frontends.</p> <p>I want to thank everybody involved with Pleroma for making this release happen! That includes the developers, of course, but also all the users who report issues and test our development code, who help others with configuration and installation and generally spread the word about Pleroma and the Fediverse. Thank you all, and I hope you’ll love Pleroma 2.0.0 :)</p> </div> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>Pleroma 1.0.0</title> <published>2019-06-28T14:37:36+02:00</published> <updated>2021-08-07T21:50:03+02:00</updated> <link rel="alternate" href="https://pleroma.social/blog/2019/06/28/pleroma-1.0.0/"/> <id>https://pleroma.social/blog/2019/06/28/pleroma-1.0.0/</id> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p><em>Note: this has originally been posted at <a href="https://blog.soykaf.com/post/pleroma-1.0/">https://blog.soykaf.com/post/pleroma-1.0/</a></em> </p> <p>After long months of doing only bugfix and security releases, we are finally releasing the long-awaited 1.0 release. No more nines!</p> <p><img src="/images/pleroma_1.png" alt="" /></p> <p><a href="https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/-/tags/v1.0.0">Pleroma 1.0.0 is here!</a></p> <p>By now, you all know how great <a href="https://pleroma.social">Pleroma</a> is. It is your favorite free software federated social network, written in Elixir. If you don’t really know it yet, check out <a href="%7B%7B%3C%20relref%20%22what-is-pleroma.md%22%3E%7D%7D">this post</a>.</p> <p>We think we have achieved a state of the project that we can call 1.0. Let me talk a bit about all the new stuff we have in store for you.</p> <h2 id="polls">Polls</h2> <p><img src="/images/pleroma_polls.png" alt="" /></p> <p>You know them from your second-favorite social network, and now you can also make funny polls in Pleroma. The rules for them are a bit more relaxed than elsewhere: You can make a lot of options and attach pictures if you want. Want to know if Rei or Asuka is best girl? You can find out!</p> <h2 id="docs">Docs!</h2> <p><a href="https://docs.pleroma.social">DOCS!</a> Finally you don’t have to find us on IRC anymore to figure out how to install new emojis.</p> <h2 id="otp-releases">OTP Releases!</h2> <p>OTP releases should be very interesting for you if you are hosting your own Pleroma server. They bundle the compiled Pleroma code with the necessary runtime files of Erlang and Elixir, so you won’t need to install those seperately. It is kind of like ‘binary releases’ for Pleroma. Check out the <a href="https://docs-develop.pleroma.social/otp_en.html#content">documentation</a> and how to <a href="https://docs-develop.pleroma.social/migrating_from_source_otp_en.html#what-are-otp-releases">switch</a> from the current source based installation method. It will also allow you to change configuration settings without recompilation.</p> <p>A word of warning: This method of release is still slightly experimental, so if you encounter anything weird, please file an issue on the <a href="https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/">tracker</a> and switch back to the source based installation if needed.</p> <h2 id="lots-of-other-stuff">Lots of other stuff!</h2> <p>Check out the <a href="https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/-/tags/v1.0.0">changelog</a> and the <a href="https://docs.pleroma.social">docs</a> to find more cool new stuff, like emoji packs, mix tasks that will help you keep your database small, mongooseim integration to share accounts with an XMPP server… and so on :)</p> <h2 id="thanks">Thanks!</h2> <p>First I want to thank YOU for reading my blog post. </p> <p>Then I want to thank all the people who work on Pleroma. There are too many by now too mention by name, and I’m thankful for all of them. You made all this possible. Without code to base it on, there wouldn’t be a fediverse community.</p> <p>I also want to thank everybody who contributes to Pleroma in a way that’s not code. If you write issues in the bug tracker, run an instance for yourself or other, or donate your time and money in another way, it is very appreciated.</p> <p>Last, I want to thank the fediverse community. Working on Pleroma is fun for the technology, but you make it fun to actually use this stuff :) </p> <p>Look forward to a great year for Pleroma and the Fediverse. Let’s make 2.0 happen sooner :)</p> <p>Now I’m off to Pyongyang to escape all this social network stuff, see ya!</p> </div> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>Fighting the Bloat! SSH Support in Pleroma</title> <published>2019-04-01T04:01:00+02:00</published> <updated>2021-08-07T21:50:03+02:00</updated> <link rel="alternate" href="https://pleroma.social/blog/2019/04/01/bbs-support/"/> <id>https://pleroma.social/blog/2019/04/01/bbs-support/</id> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Pretty much one year ago, we started fighting the typical Web 4.0 Javascript bloat by adding <a href="/blog/2018/04/01/gopher/">Gopher support</a>. After a wildly successful <a href="/blog/2019/02/22/pleroma-0-9-9/">0.999 release</a>, we heard your calls for more debloating. The biggest complaint with the gopher support was the inability to post. So today, we’re taking it a step further: Making Pleroma a BBS.</p> <p><img src="/images/pleroma-ssh-help.png" alt="" /></p> <p>If you are a time traveller from the 19th century, you might remember that there was a time before the internet. It was the <a href="https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary">age of the BBS</a>, a technology now long forgotten.</p> <p>A BBS (Bulletin Board System) is a program someone used to run on their computer that would make it possible for other people to call in - literally - with a modem and read and send messages, chat and do general social things. They were so popular that some people got huge phone bills because they dialed in so much. Why did they do it? Same reason we use social networks today: They didn’t have any friends!</p> <p>One big advantage of the BBS format in comparison to HTML/JS is that it is text-only, no markup at all, no images and no virtual machine needed to subsidize the RAM industry. Now, we know that you probably don’t have an actual modem at home, and most servers won’t be attached to one. So here’s the next best thing to a number you can dial in to: An ssh server!</p> <p>As you can see, you can log in with your existing account an password and enjoy the super high speed of modern pipes with text-only interfaces. You can check your home timeline, post something, and even reply! Is it useful? Not really, but I’m sure rinpatch will fix that!</p> <p>So how do you actually run this on your server? Well, it is still in development, but you can try it out right now by checking out the <a href="https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/tree/feature/bbs">BBS</a> branch over at our Gitlab server. Just follow the instructions in <code>docs/config.md</code> and you should be running your own BBS in no time! Hack the planet!</p> </div> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>Pleroma's First Release! 0.9.9</title> <published>2019-02-22T13:58:34+01:00</published> <updated>2021-08-07T21:50:03+02:00</updated> <link rel="alternate" href="https://pleroma.social/blog/2019/02/22/pleroma-0.9.9/"/> <id>https://pleroma.social/blog/2019/02/22/pleroma-0.9.9/</id> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>The <a href="https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma-fe/tree/191c02af1ebfc7e6c53dc88d97c4e3ca23fbea8b">first commit</a> in Pleroma happened 2016, on October 26th. Now it’s a few years and months later, and we are doing our first stable release!</p> <p>Are you still running <code>develop</code>? That’s so 2018.</p> <p><img src="/images/0.9.9.screenshot.png" alt="" /></p> <p><a href="https://pleroma.social">Pleroma</a> has been growing a lot last year. According to <a href="https://fediverse.network">fediverse statistics</a>, we now have over 400 instances online on the network. We are seeing more people use it everyday, because it is easy to setup and runs on small devices like a Raspberry Pi.</p> <p>For a rather long time, only I was running a Pleroma instance. For another long time, maybe 10 or 20 other instances were online. With a community of that size, it was easy to tell everyone to just use the development branch and notify them when something breaky happened. But by now we have around 80 contributors and over 400 admins and not every piece of code is written or reviewed by me. This led to a few rather rough upgrades, which could have been avoided by having a stable branch.</p> <p><img src="/images/0.9.9.screenshot-masto.png" alt="" /></p> <p>So today, I am releasing the first stable Pleroma release, Pleroma 0.9.9 (a very strong release, maybe the strongest!). So why should you use it? Here are the nice things about it:</p> <ul> <li>Only tested features in it</li> <li>Will receive bugfixes</li> <li>Will have changelogs between releases</li> <li>I run it on my server so I’ll know what breaks :)</li> </ul> <p>By now, Pleroma has become a useful tool for thousands of users and this stable release is a great milestone to promote this.</p> <p>If you want, you can still run on the <code>develop</code> branch, but expect this one to be in flux a lot.</p> <p>Thanks to everyone who works on Pleroma! Thanks to everyone who reports bugs! And a big thank you if you are using Pleroma! Let’s continue to make Pleroma better together in 2019!</p> <p>You can find the release at <a href="https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/tags/v0.9.9">our Gitlab</a> or download the tar.gz right <a href="/misc/pleroma-v0.9.9.tar.gz">here</a>.</p> </div> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>Gopher Support in Pleroma</title> <published>2018-04-01T04:01:00+02:00</published> <updated>2021-08-07T21:50:03+02:00</updated> <link rel="alternate" href="https://pleroma.social/blog/2018/04/01/gopher/"/> <id>https://pleroma.social/blog/2018/04/01/gopher/</id> <content type="xhtml"> <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p><em>Note: this has originally been posted at <a href="https://blog.soykaf.com/post/gopher-support-in-pleroma/">https://blog.soykaf.com/post/gopher-support-in-pleroma/</a></em> </p> <p>As you may already know, <a href="/">Pleroma</a> is high-performance and low-resource fediverse server mean to run even on small devices like a Raspberry Pi.</p> <p>Still, there is one part of Pleroma that is wasteful to the extreme…</p> <p><img src="/images/no-js.png" alt="" /></p> <p>It’s true! Pleroma’s mother allowed it to have TWO frontends, but both are resource-hogging Javascript monstrosities. If you don’t have a ‘modern’ browser that turns your PC into a heater, you won’t be able to see any posts!</p> <p>So where did we go wrong? I think the problem goes way back. We made a deal with the Devil when we accepted free-form HTML into our systems. The best solution is to not make this mistake anymore, and go back to the future to a better alternative.</p> <p>And that’s why, today, I’m announcing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)">Gopher</a> support for Pleroma!</p> <p>You can try it out right now! Install a gopher compatible browser like Lynx and run <code>lynx gopher://pleroma.soykaf.com:9999</code>. This is what you’ll see.</p> <p><img src="/images/lynx-1.png" alt="" /></p> <p>Simplicity is perfection! You can easily read any of the public timelines through this.</p> <p><img src="/images/lynx-2.png" alt="" /></p> <p>And of course you can also see conversations in a thread view. This should be enough for 90% of our social network needs, while being a hundred times more efficient than HTML, with JS or without.</p> <p><img src="/images/lynx-3.png" alt="" /></p> <p>I hope that with this recent change, it is clear once again that Pleroma is always innovating for better resource usage and efficient computing. Have fun and see you on the fediverse!</p> </div> </content> </entry> </feed>