mastodon.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

Administered by:

Server stats:

380K
active users

@itsfoss

The cinnamon desktop has made a difference, but I have used xfce, kde, gnome, lxde each has it's own positive and negative quirks.