[yupyup54133]

Cool but I'd much rather see someone sell a little server box where all I would need to do is plug it into my router and open up a port.

IE: If we are going to decentralize with Mastodon-style software lets actually decentralize the hardware used to host the system.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Curious: sell at what price.

This is something I have thought about for many years. If we have small form factor computers that sell for, say, $5-$25 why not distribute pre-configured, free, open source servers on well-understood hardware^1 instead of having to test on various different hardware possibilities, not all of them well-understood, or making assumptions about what hardware people should have available. IMO, there is value in server configuration. A purchaser could choose to compile and install the software herself but having an example of a working configuration can be invaluable. For me, good examples are usually worth more than countless pages of verbose documentation. The question I have is the dollar amount of that value.

The example I have thought about in the past, rightly or wrongly, is the WRT54G and what became OpenWRT. To me, focusing on one item of hardware initially has advantages. That is generally what vendors of off-the-shelf products do. Yet with open source software, there is usually an expectation that it must work on a variety of hardware, which is likely to make things more complicated.

1. I am not implying this has never been done or that it isn't still happening.

[tedunangst]

If I sell you a computer for $5 and you email me questions about how to configure DNS, what kind of reply are you expecting?

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Having a working DNS cofiguation is generally a prerequisite to sending email.

There is of course email smtpd software that allows receiving email using only IP addresses. Email predates DNS. Two people running their own smptd's could exchange email directly using only IP addresses, without the need for DNS. But the way most people use email today, delegating total control over it to third parties, email is highly dependent on DNS.

[savingsPossible]

"You can buy a support plan for $100/month. Renewal not automatic, only if you opt it"

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Another example that comes to mind: There are routers that come with Wireguard pre-installed. No technical support just online instructions, forum and a custom GUI.

[mxuribe]

You're not wrong. But, i feel that this type of (paid) offering is the next best thing. What we need is many, many more paid providers, which helps decentralize things a little at least (and of course helps those less techie than some)...until your proposed solution is more easily implementable by a greater swath of the interested population.

[js4ever]

I believe it will come with time, we already have IPv6 and microservers like Pi, but then users have to secure, update,backup, monitor and upgrade the software and hardware regularly ... There is no solution yet for that.

So it's definitely an easier solution to use a managed service. BTW here is another Mastodon provider: https://elest.io/open-source/mastodon

Disclaimer: I work there

[harlanji]

Exactly. The key is that it's a paid service. And it looks to be based on Pleroma and they will export data and transfer domains upon request. As long as it stays like that and that's the bar across providers everyone wins.

[clankyclanker]

Looks like the Freedombox.org folks are shipping that now, for €70:

https://freedombox.org/buy/

[kornhole]

I have Mastodon, mail, XMPP, Coturn, and Nextcloud instances all running on a single Raspberry PI setup quite easily thanks to yunohost.org. They have ISO's for just about any hardware or a VPS.

Hostman and Mastohost are among the other managed hosters of fediverse instances.

[wmf]

Helm looks pretty cool although it's expensive and they only have two apps (email and OwnCloud): https://thehelm.com/products/helm-personal-server-v2

[WhyNotHugo]

> all I would need to do is plug it into my router and open up a port.

I like this vision of how things should work, but finding an ISP that _doesn't_ put a firewall for incoming connections nor use an ISP-grade NAT is challenging.

In my [limited] experience, neither tech support nor sales have any idea what any of these terms mean, so they can't advise at all.

[neltnerb]

What are the odds the router itself can act as a Mastodon server with some external storage? I'm not sure how resource intensive Mastodon is in practice.

[andrewzah]

I don't think the average router would be able to run much of anything, not to mention how insecure the average router is since people don't update them.

Mastodon is very resource heavy, I couldn't get it to run on a raspberry pi 3b. Pleroma is an alternative to mastodon that is very light on resources, I'd recommend that personally.

[singpolyma3]

I don't know that I'd call Pleroma "very light", but it's very light compared to Mastodon for sure.

[harlanji]

I can easily run Pleroma on 1G VPS and Pi3s; the heaviest part is the Postgres server, which can itself be tuned to be pretty light. It relies on PG's native JSON data type which is cool. I run a couple instances and poked around with it for a few hours. I'd love to see SQLite support in Pleroma given that it allegedly has JSON now; there is a 2 year old ticket on their GitLab [1] mentioning it tho I've not spiked in to see if it's 100% plausible to port. Pleroma is written with Elixir that has a DB abstraction library that supports SQLite, I was just looking into it this week.

Even if SQLite JSON isn't sufficient it could be realized with string columns for now, and indeed SQLite is recommended by Library of Congress for archival storage and used by iPhone so I think it's a solid way to expand Pleroma even if native JSON is not sufficient.

If anyone wants to pay me to do this as open source I'd jump, contact in bio. I don't know Elixir yet but am motivated and have 15+ years of dev experience in all kinds of systems, and experience in the adjacent parts.

1. https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/-/issues/1333

[rglullis]

You can run Pleroma (with its database) on a raspberry pi with 1GB RAM. A single-user instance of Mastodon will require 8GB to run comfortably.

I think the main issue of Mastodon is that its search completely reliant on elasticsearch, while Pleroma tries to go by only with PostgreSQL FTS?

[wrycoder]

What could possibly take up 8 GB? It’s just some text display.

[rglullis]

It's a ruby application. Take all the background processes to build timelines, trending hashtags, etc and it adds up. Perhaps a single-user instance might do with less, but still...

[singpolyma3]

Mastodon is very RAM hungry. Not going to run on most routers.

[eloisant]

It probably depends on the load? It's a Rails app AFAIK so if the load is low (which is likely for a family or group of friends) it should be able to run anywhere.

[vidarh]

If you don't federate (and so only receive toots from accounts you've explicitly followed, or who mention you or their shares/boosts) and you don't follow a huge number of highly active accounts, then maybe.

[singpolyma3]

Getting toots or mentions from accounts not on your server is exactly what federation is for, so not sure what you mean here...

[vidarh]

Mastodon has two separate federation mechanisms:

1. For anything where you are mentioned specifically, or where you're a follower, the toots gets distributed automatically.

2. For anything where the toot is marked public but you are not a follower or mentioned, your instance will only receive a toot if you've explicitly configured federation of the public feed with one or more instances that is reasonably well connected.

The former is "cheap" unless you follow lots of people. The latter is like sucking on a firehose, because you get pretty much everything. If you do, it matter relatively little how large your userbase is, because you're still processing nearly every public toot.

[singpolyma3]

I would love to do this, but it's a lot more work to maintain that kind of thing for most users. At least with Togethr we let you choose from many different data centres so the instances won't all be in the same place.

[2Gkashmiri]

You know what? Check out pleromapi, it does what it says.

A raspberry pi image that auto installs pleroma and you are greeted with an image within the first boot. No configs other than domain and passwords.

Try it out.

[ay]

You would still need the domain setup, etc… or would you be happy to use your hardware and some free subdomain from elsewhere ?

[0x0000000]

I think it's something that a vanity subdomain would be fine for the base case, with an optional upsell for a custom domain. The self-hosted box would need to have some way to dynamically update DNS, as the average consumer doesn't have a static IP.

[rglullis]

What you want is achievable with https://dappnode.io

[antisthenes]

Not really sure what they're selling besides an Intel NUC with a large SSD at a ridiculous markup?

Where is it supposed to go anyway? Next to your router or into a data center?

[rglullis]

They are selling the overpriced hardware as a way to support the development of the OS, which can be summed up as:

- docker-based app store

- IPFS-based image registry

- some utilities to set up your own VPN

- a "portal" system for those applications you want to open to the public web

- webUI to manage all that.

And yes, it is meant for you to run at your home.

[MR4D]

An app for the Synology drives would help.