deutrino's picture

I think I originally proposed this like 2 or 3 years ago, I can't find the thread but at one point my account on the forum got accidentally deleted so I'm guessing that's where it went.

I want to start a thread for tracking effort to build appliances for various Activitypub Fediverse projects such as Pleroma, Pixelfed, etc. For those not familiar, the Fediverse is a decentralized social network of many different servers running many different platforms, which all talk to each other (more or less) - imagine being able to follow & talk to Instagram and Youtube users from your Twitter account, but with no big tech data mining involved.

Anyway I've finally gotten some time to pay attention to this and have been grinding out Pleroma test instances and documenting / updating documentation each time, in order to learn the complicated setup procedure etc. As with my other TKL projects, I'm not ready to start putting together a build yet (especially with Pleroma as I have a bunch of potential pitfalls to research first), but finally some work is happening behind the scenes!!

So far my priorities for Turnkey builds of Fediverse apps include, in no particular order

  • Pleroma (microblogging / Twitter-like)
    • ability to split Pleroma app server and Pleroma front-end web server (e.g. to host from home without a static IP or the ability to serve port 443)???
  • Pixelfed (Instagram-like)
  • Misskey (microblogging with a unique spin)

There are plenty more platforms in the Activitypub sphere, but so far I haven't touched them, so they're not on my list (yet).

Many Fediverse apps are easily installable today with the excellent Yunohost project, which is both similar to and different from Turnkey Linux. Making Fediverse apps available on Turnkey would be an excellent addition to the scene as Yunohost focuses on installing tons of apps onto a single server (if desired, anyway) and is expressly NOT set up for the type of proxy serving I'd like to do with Pleroma (at minimum). Whereas TKL is all about stamping out containers that more or less run one single app. So there is plenty of room for Yunohost and TKL fedi apps to coexist!

I'd love to hear comments or thoughts. My plan is to come back and update this thread periodically on my progress.

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Jeremy Davis's picture

We do have a GNUSocial appliance, but that hasn't had much love for a while (and AFAIK requires a plugin to make it compatible with ActivityPub).

I recall that a user was going to create a Mastadon appliance, but it never materialized. I haven't heard of any of the ones you've mentioned, but IMO there is plenty of room in the library for some "Fediverse" appliances! :)

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