Which desktop client apps do you recommend for the fediverse?

18 respostas [Última entrada]
strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

With the recent surge in interest in the fediverse, and the persistent problems I've had with Abrowser hanging, I'm keen to try using more non-browser apps on the desktop. Has anybody tried using any of the fediverse client apps on Trisquel? How did you install them? What were your experiences?

prospero
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Joined: 05/20/2022

> Has anybody tried using any of the fediverse client apps on Trisquel?

Sorry to answer by a preliminary question, but what do you mean exactly by "fediverse"?

Does it need to be federated, as in federation of servers, or does it include almost anything non-centralized at least in its original design? Or is it rather a handy summary of everything not MAGAF? Would you consider Jami a fediverse tool? What about Signal, Telegram, Wire, Chipolata, etc.?

avrtm
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Joined: 11/22/2019
iShareFreedom
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Joined: 12/20/2021

Fediverse is the comercial name of a descentralize servers connected in the same protocol, like XMPP, email IMAP, etc. Mastodon and other free software based social media are using the ActivityPub internet protocol and others.

jxself
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Joined: 09/13/2010

"but what do you mean exactly by "fediverse"?"

See https://framatube.org/w/4294a720-f263-4ea4-9392-cf9cea4d5277

prospero
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Joined: 05/20/2022

Thanks for going out of your way to post a Wikipedia link, but I believe Wikipedia is not strypey's blog. Since the goal here is to make sure we are talking about the same thing(s) before going off-topic, I will still need the OP's own answer. It seems that almost each person using that word has their own definition. I like the "dogs & cats & various other creatures sitting on spheres" video from jxself's link, but can we say that gmail is part of fediverse? Or is it "Fediverse"? Or "the fediverse"? Or should we just name what tools we are talking about (most of the time, Mastodon and/or PeerTube) and stop using that empty misnomer?

https://trisquel.info/en/search/node/fediverse

We shall see what strypey has been meaning by "fediverse" all this time, but among non-centralized communication tools I have been using Jami mostly, and it is not federated, so that may not count. At times, Gajim and Jitsi Meet too, but the latter through Abrowser, so not sure either. We shall see. Suspense. Thanks again for your input anyway, I do appreciate help in these complex times.

> "With the recent surge in interest in the fediverse"

To me, this means that hordes of centrally controlled people moved en masse to something they do not understand (Mastodon), so some PR people suddenly felt they had to be there too, only to realize they had no idea how.

jxself
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Joined: 09/13/2010

"but can we say that gmail is part of fediverse?"

Probably not; I usually see this used in the context of social networking.

"Or should we just name what tools we are talking about (most of the time, Mastodon and/or PeerTube) and stop using that empty misnomer?"

Maybe, but really it'd be anything speaking the ActivityPub protocol. While some people may make cases about why they like one particular SMTP server over another like Postfix vs Exim or whatever. They all speak the same protocol (SMTP) so it doesn't really matter. The same with ActivityPub.

Avron

I am a translator!

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Joined: 08/18/2020

I found this picture about what uses ActivityPub.

I started using Mastodon two years ago (using fosstodon.org), it is usually characterized as "micro-blogging" and I understand posts are usually public. I am not familiar with the other things.

So far, I found interesting pieces of information, people answering my (few) questions and I tried to answer other people's questions when I could. However, there are recently too many messages (I only read things from accounts I follow, 79 now) for me to read so I need to unfollow a number of accounts.

One possibility would be to unfollow people who toot a lot and also publish interesting things on their blog, since the most interesting things will be on their blog.

4a153984acf34a12ffd8376175958d0b.png
strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

Avron:
> One possibility would be to unfollow people who toot a lot and also publish interesting things on their blog, since the most interesting things will be on their blog.

FWIW you can follow blogs in the fediverse too. A number of fediverse services exist specifically for blogging (eg instances of Plume, or of WriteFreely like Write.as) and there are ActivityPub plug-ins available for federating blogs hosted using both WordPress and Drupal.

BTW I'm name at domain, feel free to @mention or follow me :)

strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

Hi prospero, thanks for your rigorous exploration of the topic. The Wikipedia page and the video at the link posted by jxself give the correct answer to your question. I might have also directed you to:
https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/

As you can see from all three sources, fediverse is the common term for a federated social web, experienced by people running software that supports ActivityPub (GNU Social, Pleroma, PixelFed, PeerTube, Mastodon etc). A couple of apps that don't use AP are grandfathered into the definition, because they federate using other protocols with multi-protocol apps that do support AP (Diaspora only uses supports its own variant of OStatus, Zap only uses Zot).

> stop using that empty misnomer

The necessity of the term fediverse becomes clear where you participate in it. When people follow accounts hosted using PixelFed or PeerTube using accounts hosted using GNU Social, it's not really accurate to say that all of this is happening on the GNU Social network.

Jami doesn't use servers, so it's distributed, not federated. You could also says its decentralized not federated, based on an older usage of these terms, but I think this is more confusing than helpful.

Gajim is an XMPP app. XMPP is a federated protocol, like Matrix, but since neither of these interoperate with any of the AP software (yet), they're not usually considered part of the fediverse.

Jitsi Meet - as most people use it - is a centralized web app. I've heard it's possible to connect with a Jitsi Meet voice/video conference using third-party apps, but I haven't tested that, and AFAIK what's being described is a server-to-client connection. If it's a true server-to-server connection over XMPP, that would be federated, but not part of the fediverse for reasons given in the paragraph about Gajim.

As I happens, I was the original creator of the Wikipedia article on the fediverse, hoping to avoid having to give these sorts of explanations for the rest of my life :P

Avron

I am a translator!

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Joined: 08/18/2020

There is tootle in Trisquel repository. It works but I had some issues, can't remember which. I will try it more.

I tried putting https://<MastodonInstance>/@<UserName>.rss in Liferea, it works but the outcome is very poor.

jxself
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Joined: 09/13/2010

"With the recent surge in interest in the fediverse, and the persistent problems I've had with Abrowser hanging, I'm keen to try using more non-browser apps on the desktop. Has anybody tried using any of the fediverse client apps on Trisquel? How did you install them? What were your experiences?"

I've been using toot: https://packages.trisquel.org/nabia/toot

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

I just eat a lot more beans so that I toot a lot.

My fediverse tool is my gastrointestinal system. Specifically the methane production part.

prospero
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Joined: 05/20/2022

Free at last!

A vibrant toot to you too.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cabbage_Soup.

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

This scene is me and my French neighbor tooting on the fediverse: https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=30pzUZzcz48

avrtm
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Joined: 11/22/2019
prospero
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Joined: 05/20/2022

Horror and dereliction, the mad voter has set its evil eyes on this thread. I'm out of here. Too bad, I would have liked to read what the OP had to say about their ActivityPub adventures, now that I finally got what the whole thing was about thanks to jxself, Avron and iShareFreedom. I like that tree, I may in fact try to climb some of its branches.

strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

Thanks avron, jxself, and avrtm for your app recommendations. I'm guessing most of you must be on Nabia? I'm still stuck on Etiona, which doesn't appear to have Toot, Tootle, or WhaleBird in its repositories (at least they don't show up in Synaptic). I guess it's about time I got stuck in and did an OS upgrade ;)

jxself
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Joined: 09/13/2010

Sure, or build it yourself - https://github.com/ihabunek/toot