---
title: "Back on the Fediverse"
date: 2021-02-14T20:47:38+10:00
draft: false
---

A recent post from Alan Pope, [Mastodon Instances, Everywhere](https://popey.com/blog/2021/02/mastodon-instances-everywhere/), reminded me that I also used to run a Mastodon instance back when it was all still new and shiny.

My instance ran for awhile and had a few users and I actually enjoyed being on the network. It was much more civil and discussions seemed friendlier than Twitter. Eventually, I shut my instance down as it took more and more *sysadmin time*, was quite resource hungry and their updates did not always go smoothly.

Recently, I decided to jump back into the Fediverse and see how many people I could follow there instead of on Twitter. Not surprisingly, most of those in the Linux community are the easiest to find Mastodon accounts for.

To get on the Fediverse, I chose to spin up an instance of [Pleroma](https://pleroma.social/) and so far I'm liking this. It uses *a lot* less resources than Mastodon itself, seems easier to keep up-to-date and even has a clone of the Mastodon interface (see [MastoFE](https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/mastofe)).

![](/images/2021/pleroma-mastofe.jpg)

How long will I run it this time? Who knows, but I am enjoying it again and without the stress of running a "real" Mastodon instance.