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Elena Rossini ⁂

My 2024 in tech (so far):
- same old Jan-May
- in mid-June I started the blog to introduce the Fediverse to people not familiar with it
- in July I started interoperability tests between Fediverse projects
- in August I federated my Wordpress site, joined Friendica and 3 content aggregators. More interoperability tests
- in October I joined Sharkey
- yesterday I found out about "eternal September" (thanks @nimi) & went down a Usenet rabbit hole
- now I wanna learn Linux!

My 2024 in tech – UPDATED
- Jan-May: same old same old
- mid-Jun: I started the blog
- Jul: I started doing interoperability tests between projects
- Aug: I federated my Wordpress site, joined Friendica and 3 content aggregators. More tests
- Sep: I federated 2 more WP sites
- Oct: I joined
- Nov: I got a and installed Ubuntu on it; started learning
- Dec: I joined & am researching VPSs

🔜 heading to next Feb 🥳

A note for people who recommended to me in the last few days (@dp was the latest one): THANK YOU!!!

Self-hosting with tech help seems so much more attainable now 😊

🔗: yunohost.org

yunohost.orgYunoHost: garden your own piece of the Internet!

✨ this is what tech empowerment looks like ✨

my year in tech (Feb 2025 edition):

- Jun 2024: started the blog
- Jul: started interoperability tests
- Aug: federated my site & joined and
- Sep: federated 2 more sites
- Oct: joined
- Dec: got a , installed and started self-hosting via
- Jan 2025: set up my own and instances
- Feb: migrating to my self-hosted blog

an important addendum to my previous toot: to enjoy all the benefits of the Fediverse you only need ONE account – because projects "talk to each other" thanks to the magic of .

That said, the 2 things I find really empowering are:

1) being familiar with major projects, so I can make an informed decision about which one(s) to use

2) being able to self-host. It's the greatest feeling when it comes to digital sovereignty

And I'm just a filmmaker / creative person with 0 dev skills

@_elena I too am interested in Linux because of being on the fediverse. Thanks for documenting your journey. The fediverse is fascinating. There's always something new to discover that serves a relatively small & passionate community. Lately I'm curious about trom.tf which looks like a one stop shop for all things federated, yet I've seen no one ever talk about it. They have an ideology that might turn off some; it makes sense to me. Do you know them?

@_elena The journey will only end when you're self-hosting your own ActivityPub server!

@_elena @nimi
My wife is a not very technically inclined librarian, and she uses Linux at home without any more problems than a windows computer would cause her.

I've installed the computer.

It's running Debian with a basic Gnome desktop. She uses Firefox, libreoffice, nextcloud, Darktable and gimp.

@_elena good progress! How are you finding Ubuntu on the Pi? And is it good enough to use as a desktop computer?

@_elena that's awesome, keep it going! soon enough, you'll be programming, and then the sky's the limit! also, remember to keep a backup, in case you type the wrong command, I had to learn that the hard way, though that had its place as well I think

@_elena that's a really aggressive open source nerdery schedule!

@_elena looks like you had fun in the process ! Really happy for you !
What would you want to use a VPN for ?

@_elena I strongly recommend Proton VPN. It works just about everywhere and is a open spurce project out of Switzerland enjoying the best privacy laws on the planet. It was also started by scientists not a corporate entity wanting to mine you for money.

To that end I recommend the entire Proton suite which I use and is excellent. Though some of it is early days such as their Google Drive/Workspace alternative.

Everything either runs on Linux or they are working to build it for Linux.

@_elena @dp

YunoHost is a good choice.
At the link: doc.yunohost.org/it/install
I get "server error".
I have to go here: doc.yunohost.org/en/install to read install doc.

@piero @_elena ping @yunohost we have an issue on the Italian version of the install doc 😵

@_elena you might still have some issues depending on your ISP. If that is the case (and if it isn't as well), you are welcome to join @franciliens

@_elena Cool, maybe we can meetup a Fosdem :-)

Hi @_elena,
thank you for your crystal clear words to emphasize that having your own voice must not depend on an ableist privileged position or 'dev skills' as you put it.

That's the goal of the radical, still immature, experiment seppo.mro.name. IMO it's currently unique in its low requirements. I'd be more than grateful to hear all of your impressions and feelings about such an approach to enable personal, unsupervised onboarding.

seppo.mro.nameWeiterleitungClient-side redirect to ./about/.

@_elena this is all very cool!

Have you seen @JenJen 's artist guide to Mastodon? youtu.be/deZwO9ezGlo

Both of you are having an amazing positive impact on the fediverse and it's great to see.

@brunogirin I'd never heard of her - great guide, thanks for sharing

@_elena this seems to not be really true everywhere. As an example, I wanted to register to Pixelfed with my Mastodon Account, I was forced to create a different account to access it (I am using the @pixelfed instance). I wanted to try other apps, like the Fedi Flohmarkt, also there I need to create a dedicated account.

@madduci I'll address Pixelfed and Mastodon interoperability because Flohmarkt is not a pure social media product, it has its own different use.

Last summer I wrote about Mastodon <> Pixelfed interoperability and I stand by my words. The interoperability is EXCELLENT and I follow Mastodon accounts on Pixelfed and vice versa: blog.elenarossini.com/the-futu

I can also run my Pixelfed account on many made-for-Mastodon mobile apps (Ivory, Mona, Tusky)

Elena Rossini · The Future of Social is Here: a Show and Tell (part 1: Mastodon ↔️ Pixelfed)
More from Elena Rossini ⁂

@_elena i trust your word, but i've got a totally different experience. I try to sign in to the pixelfed.social instance using my mastodon.social account (through the login button), but the process is rejected.

@madduci maybe try with Phanpy? It's SOOO GOOD and works across platforms - plus IMHO it's so much better as a web client (and super responsive for mobile use, too)

@_elena may I ask who your VPS provider is?

Played around with Yunohost on a Raspberry Pi at home and quite liked it, but didn't want to go through the effort (and risk) of hosting it via my home connection.

@_elena I was wondering how you chose your #VPS? There are so many providers.