I am striving to make the foundations very similar to Lemmy's, to facilitate potential migration in either direction. The main differences are that /kbin will ultimately be a modular gateway to the entire fediverse. I will tell you more about it a bit later.

You can search for groups and users in the following way (this will also be improved):
https://kbin.social/search?q=%40ernest%40szmer.info
https://kbin.social/search?q=%40wolnyinternet%40szmer.info

You can also disable federation in the options (sidebar) and only see local posts.

Kbin is newer, so it has less traffic on its magazines than communities on Lemmy do, at least at the moment. Just like in Lemmy or other fediverse instances, to see kbin magazines someone has had to search for them on your Lemmy instance before they'll show up on your instance. So more people searching for Lemmy communities in your insurance rather than kbin's magazines means less will show up on your feed. That's what they have in common.

Kbin itself is a different software backend to access the fediverse. It supports viewing/subscibing/posting to Lemmy communities in other fediverse instances, but also has microblogging support (basically like random Twitter posts) that supports mastodon (fediverse Twitter). It also has a lot of customization options if you go into your kbin settings. Plus I read kbin doesn't rely on Javascript like Lemmy does, so that's a nice security bonus.

Kbin is much newer but I like the direction it's going. They do need to simplify link aggregation to make it a bit easier to view communities, but it's a work in progress that has a lot of potential.

kbin looks good but I can't get over the fact that its backend is written in PHP. In the long run, lemmy's Rust backend will probably be way more resource efficient and thus better for hosters. We'll have to see though, since tech stacks aren't the most important thing. But for me a Rust backend is a huge plus.

From what I've found thus far:

• Community is smaller currently due to being newer but connects to the Lemmy, Mastodon, etc communities so it doesn't feel small.
• Definitely needs a mobile app for collapsing comments, notifications, etc but installing on mobile through the browser works quite well.
• Would like the ability to delete new magazines to change the URL for instance which I currently can't figure out how to do.
• Calling communities magazines is a little confusing but nothing serious.
• The ability to sign up without an email like Lemmy would be a huge bonus.
• The privacy policy and UI is much nicer than on Lemmy.
• Signing up is open compared to Lemmy which requires an explanation and review.

Most of these things will likely and hopefully come with time as the platform is developed. Other than that I feel this will most likely be my safe haven from the bs Reddit (fuck spez) has pulled.

I'll admit I can't wrap my head around how many of this works.

I like kbin and the default content it provides for the most part... But I want to branch out a bit.

I know there's a formula 1 community I want to join on lemmy, do I need to sign up for Lemmy now? And do I need to sign up for multiple "instances" whatever those are?

I'm pretty tech savvy but the fediverse makes me feel stupid, i have to assume this could be a barrier to entry for some

there is a bit of learning curve.

I found a couple of things :

• if you go to your preferences, you can get a more famililar reddit look and feel, by adding the top bar, and a few other tweaks.
• i think that ultimately it wont (shouldn't) matter what 'window' you look through into the fediverse - correct me if i'm wrong. I like kbin a lot, but i', looking at beehaw. i was asked not to join lemmy.ml because of server load issues.
• i'm not sure how mastodon fits. i guess that's a federated app - but is seems entirely seperate.

But when searching for kbin from this Lemmy Account, I do not find much. I feel like I am missing some basic concept, that makes it pretty clear. Why this is such a one way experience.

Not sure if i understand correctly, but instances can only show you what they are aware of. This does not really depend on the underlaying software (unless it is specialized, like PeerTube maybe).

Couple things i like about kbin over lemmy:

• Has a good privacy policy, and works without javascript.
• It integrates federated services like mastodon really nicely, so not only lemmy posts but mastodon, peertube and other services using activitypub will show and any comments sent to them will also show up on the other end
• I personally think its more intuitive to find new communities, back on lemmy when i was on a less popular instance (tchncs), there was only a couple native communities and they were german, to add more i had to manually find and add them. Whereas on refreshing kbin, i can see a list of random threads/people/posts displayed on the right, alongside other posts on the homepage, which can promote less popular stuff i hadn't heard of before. Theres also the microblog, and magazines.
• I find the design a lot nicer overall as well