<p>A recent post from Alan Pope, <ahref="https://popey.com/blog/2021/02/mastodon-instances-everywhere/">Mastodon Instances, Everywhere</a>, reminded me that I also used to run a Mastodon instance back when it was all still new and shiny.</p>
<p>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 <em>sysadmin time</em>, was quite resource hungry and their updates did not always go smoothly.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>To get on the Fediverse, I chose to spin up an instance of <ahref="https://pleroma.social/">Pleroma</a> and so far I’m liking this. It uses <em>a lot</em> less resources than Mastodon itself, seems easier to keep up-to-date and even has a clone of the Mastodon interface (see <ahref="https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/mastofe">MastoFE</a>).</p>
<p>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.</p>
