I want to host a fediverse instance but I need it to be light (limited system resources). Mastodon seems to be kinda heavy. GotoSocial is supposedly very light? (but limited on functionality?) is Pixelfed much heavier? Bonfire is built on elixir so should also be light? Akkoma? Pleroma?

Also, I need it to be engaging to people migrating mostly from IG, so I do need some bells/whistles I guess

thanks!

EDIT: The instance is supposed to be hosting a community of 100-200 people. Maybe even more in the future (in which case we would probably migrate to another server)

Having a "facebook pages" / mini website / pixelfed portfolio is very functional for the people I plan to invite.

top 25 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 4 hours ago

@geoma I'm really interested in what you are doing. Are you aware of coopcloud.tech ? this is designed to make deloyment of apps across multiple servers. My thought was that perhaps you could go wider but deeper and offer to setup a series of Yunhost instances - and then federating them (Nextcloud, ActivityPub etc) for each organisation?

You could then use more basic tech at each location / for each organisation and get the benefit of them providing backup to each other.

Id actually been looking at doing this for sailingclubs - They need Web/Customer Relationship -Membership Management as well social media integration.

If you are engaging with people who are currently on Insta etc. you may also need to look at something like #Postiz postiz.com/ - to message out to FB , Insta etc and include links back to ActivityPub/Websites to encourage people to migrate.

[–] kiol@discuss.online 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

100 - 200 users is a lot, especially with public federation. I would go for Pleroma fork or setup Pixelfed as direct IG interface.

16gb recommended for people actually using it. It'll be $40 - 80 a month VPS.

Since you plan to scale up, go 16gb minimum. 100gb minimum, but consider how you want to handle photos.

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

@geoma @kiol That sounds like something that would be possible with #PAYG #Oraclecloud account - Most of the resources would come from allways free tier so you'd basically only end up paying for test intances and bits and pieces.

[–] kiol@discuss.online 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I would never do that if the goal is a private server people trust me to run. Good luck with it.

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 3 hours ago

@kiol Ah .. critically here I'm not talking about Oracle free accounts - its just VMs with Oracle - but they are low cost - really though it doesn't matter what provider you are using - they key is to have more instances (to provide backup and redudancy for each individual resource) - that could include onpremise low cost instances

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

https://aussie.zone/post/21093

Couple hundred users and it's running on 8GB RAM, 4 vCPU, 160GB NVME storage. Which according to OVH Sydney is about AU$10/m

But that doesn't include the the Pict-rs media store so keep that in mind for your storage numbers.

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago

on Lemmy?

[–] nooch@lemmy.vg 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If it's only for you, have you considered Holos Social? Self hosted in your smartphone

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago

will check it out., but no, this is for a community

[–] JupiterRowland@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If you want Instagram users to move, there's no real alternative to Pixelfed. You can literally move an entire account full of images and posts over from Instagram to Pixelfed.

If, however, you're seriously eyeing Bonfire, check Hubzilla. Bonfire promises lots of stuff. Hubzilla offers more than what Bonfire even only promises and then some. Also, while Bonfire is still in fairly early development, Hubzilla is tried-and-true, stable software that has been in development since 2012, for even longer than Mastodon. And Hubzilla only needs a LAMP stack. Basically, Bonfire is Hubzilla from Wish.com at best. And AFAIK, Hubzilla even needs fewer server resources per user than Friendica.

Downsides: There's no phone app (but then, there's none for Bonfire either). You've got no other choice but to use the Web interface; at least Hubzilla can be installed on phones as a Progressive Web App. On top of that, especially the default theme is not really user-friendly and kind of stuck in the early 2010s, and for alternative themes, you need to include third-party repositories into your installation. Posting images isn't as straight-forward as on typical social media; it's more like a blog in the sense of having to upload image files before you can use them. And if you want alt-texts, you have to learn to get your hands dirty on BBcode.

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago

pp (but then, there’s none for Bonfire either). You’ve got no other choice but to use the Web interface; at least Hubzilla can be installed on phones as a Progressive Web App. On top of that, especially the default theme is not really user-friendly and kind of stuck in the early 2010s, and for alternative themes, you

I've messed a bit with Hubzilla but found its interface to be kinda old dated looking. It is not a problem for me, but I want to host a server in which I can manage to gradually migrate users from IG to the fedi, and I'm not sure if Hubzilla fits the bill. IOne thing I do love about Hubzilla is that ist kinda allows you to host your own "site", like facebook pages... IMHO this is a great niche for the Fediverse by allowing people that don't have a website, to solve their website needs and social network needs in one place. Of course a website is a website and I hope every entrepreneur has one, but in real life sadly most people don't, as IG sequestered this function.

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 1 day ago

@geoma @JupiterRowland This is really useful info. I get the feeling that Hubzilla would be good for #coops #charities #communitygroup and #nonprofit orgs.

[–] M33@piefed.world 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

For a single user instance (or friends - family) pretty much anything will do.

Consider also ease of administration, upgrade smoothness. It vary quite a lot depending on the stack and maturity of instances flavors.

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

looking for something for a community of 100-200 I guess

[–] M33@piefed.world 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

With 200 accounts and 5 to 10% active users that is 10 to 20 concurrent connections on peak hours. Probably more like <10.

In that range you still should prefer lightweight instances with best admin and moderation tools.

System load and storage will be more affected by the federation itself than you user activity.

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

@geoma Hey .. we talked on #Reddit - welcome. ¿Hablas español tambien? Great So I guess the idea would be to get some kind of requirements together.

What system resources do you have?
How important is it that your posts are IG like (that would as people say suggest pixelfed as the default option I am guesssing).

What do you mean by Mastodon feeling 'kind of heavy'? Do you mean complicated or CPU, memory, storage heavy? - Regardless of what application you are considering the second point is more about who you want to be using the instance. I would strongly recommend that you limit it to friends and family - and for that (regardless of what software you are using) - the requirements aren't huge.

I'm also going to mention @FediTips - who might be able make some suggestions but yeah .. more info please?

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Hey! Sí, hablo castellano! Mejor que inglés. Estoy en Chile.

I do have a considerable server (16GB RAM and a nice CPU/GPU), but I am sharing this server with a bunch of other services I host with Yunohost (a couple of nextcloud instances, immich, some gancio instances, etc.,)and after trying out a lot of things and running out of RAM I am in the process of pruning and selecting resource efficient services.

I have this project https://eticadigital.cl/ and we reached a point in which we have a community and I think that if we manage to host a succesful Fediverse instance we could get the ball going by having members of our community start using it parallel to IG. These are IG oriented people that have learned and are sick of IG slop/AI/addicitive algorythms/data mining/proprietary software/etc.

It would be oh so neat if they could have something like facebook pages (A small mini "website")... Because a lot of people do need a website but won't build one and have the feeling that IG solves this need. I guess Pixelfed portfolio functionality would work.

I've just heard that, for example, for 100 users, mastodon is more resource heavy than Pixelfed? (I am thinking in terms of RAM and CPU, but mostly RAM is the main limiting factor here I guess). I don't want to limit to friends and family because I am building a community and some people are moving me to host this because they are feeling the urge

thanks!

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

In the past I've asked similar questions https://lemmy.ml/post/16637478

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Gotosocial with Phanpy or a mobile app works great when you mainly use it as a personal server to interact with other servers. The limits are mostly intentional privacy features that make it less suitable as a public publishing platform.

Otherwise Akkoma works well and doesn't need much resources either, but the setup is a bit involved.

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago

Sad thing is Akkoma is not yet on Yunohost. It is for a community of 100-200 I guess

[–] Tealk@rollenspiel.forum 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

What do you think of Friendica? It only needs PHP and a database.

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

I think it looks kinda ugly? But could do... But between Friendica and Pixelfed, Pixelfed looks much sexier

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 1 points 10 hours ago

@geoma @Tealk You are running #yunohost like I am? What server reaourcew do you have? Running both Friendica and Pixelfed is an option but without knowing more about your situation...

[–] Tealk@rollenspiel.forum 1 points 11 hours ago

Yeah, the interface isn't winning any beauty pageants, but it's the most feature-rich software I know; the question is, how do you use social media?

[–] abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es 2 points 2 days ago

@geoma @Tealk I run #Friendica and #pixelfed on an instance of #Yunohost. Just for me, my friends and family. (Gosh I wasn't sure about the use of the reflexive first person pronoun there). But I guess that it really does depended on what the system requirements are and - taking into account the, engaging with people who are migrating from IG, requirement to. Are thoes people mainly using pixelfed?