Kbin Roadmap 2023 - Fediverse - kbin.social
kbin.social
A certain stage of development has ended - a prototype was created that allowed me to verify whether such a form makes sense in the #fediverse. Until now, it was a project that I developed in my free time. Now, thanks to the great people from Nlnet, I will be able to devote much more time to it. This time, we have already...

As explained previously, this instance is still running on the Lemmy dev’s free hosting offer which was graciously extended (thx!) a bit for me to look into transferring it to my own server.

I haven’t been making as much progress with it as I hoped in recent weeks (due to various factors), but to be honest the little work that I did put into it made me realize that I am really not a big fan of the tech-stack that Lemmy uses.

As I have been running and using some other Fediverse software, I also realized that the communities-only nature of Lemmy is isolating it from the rest of the Fediverse and to be honest I am not too happy with the homegrown community lately.

So I am seriously considering a reboot of slrpnk.net using a different software and now might be a good time for it as there are only very few active users of this instance and I have to transfer it to my server soon anyway.

Options that I considered are Pixelfed (for a more creators/artist focussed instance), Akkoma (to be closer to the main Fediverse) and the new Kbin.

The linked roadmap convinced me that Kbin might be the best option. It uses a tech-stack I am much more familiar with and combines Lemmy like communities with Mastodon like microblogging.

So while I have not 100% made up my mind yet, consider this an early warning that this instance is probably going to undergo some major changes and if you would prefer to stay on Lemmy, it might be better to migrate your account somewhere else.

However Kbin is in theory compatible with Lemmy, so it might end up not such a big change after all. Do note however that there is no migration path, so accounts and communities would need to be re-created.

Let me know what you think :)

  • Steve@slrpnk.net
    1·
    2 years ago

    Kbin looks like it has a nice UI and I see a lot of Lemmy posts, including my own, so federation seems to work well and it could be a good match and smooth transition.

    Just curious, when you say accounts would need to be recreated does that mean existing accounts will be deleted or just cleared and re-set ?

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netOPM
      1·
      2 years ago

      Just curious, when you say accounts would need to be recreated does that mean existing accounts will be deleted or just cleared and re-set ?

      I would not attempt to convert the user-database at all. Most accounts are probably dormant (or spam accounts from before), and for GDPR reasons I would rather not like to take over a lot of user data like email addresses and passwords. Better to delete those and start fresh.

      I wonder though what happens if someone tries to address an previously existing account or community on the same url via federation…

      We probably also need to have a transition period during which previous users can reserve their user-names so that no impersonation can take place.

      • Steve@slrpnk.net
        1·
        2 years ago

        That makes sense and is understandable. Yeah I was curious about that and if federation would complicate things. I know these accounts show up as copies on Mastodon ( username@slrpnk.net ) but I assume those would get deleted with it. Some sort of transition period is a good idea and might help resolve that if possible.

        • poVoq@slrpnk.netOPM
          1·
          1 year ago

          I don’t think so, but it should be easy to recreate. But for now I think I’ll stay on Lemmy after all. Kbin probably needs a bit further maturing before it can fully replace Lemmy.

  • cromlyngames@slrpnk.net
    1·
    1 year ago

    Edit: Server migration is complete and registrations are open again.

    I assume based on my registration being accepted you’re also down for possibly hosting part of the reddit exodus next week? I don’t want to blow up your server cost plan

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netOPM
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, lets see how it goes. Maybe I should explain that this is running on actual hardware owned by me and not on some rented VPS in a cloud data-center. In some ways that allows me to be more flexible with the performance, but it does also puts some limits on how much I can scale this vertically.

      • dreamLogic@slrpnk.net
        1·
        1 year ago

        I self host stuff myself and I always find it annoying how literally 100% of the time people assume you are using someones VPS.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netOPM
    1·
    1 year ago

    Small update: Registrations are currently disabled and I am working on migrating this Lemmy instance to my server. So far it looks good, but I need to rewrite all the container deploy scripts to work with Podman, so it will take a few more days.

    I am also still interested in kbin, but the project is undergoing massive rework right now (with a NLnet grant) and will probably not really be ready for easy self-hosting until later this year.

    Edit: Server migration is complete and registrations are open again.

  • dotCaffe@slrpnk.net
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m excited to give Kbin a try, or whatever you settle on. I’ll still probably stay a mostly reader, occasional commenter, but I’m along for the ride!