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Part of the motivation for self-hosting this on a SPARC came from an experience circa 2014-5. I had a HP-UX workstation running Debian-ports HPPA. As a workstation it sucked, it had no sound hardware, the GPU was the barebones basic model, and Linux for it only supports a handful of framebuffers.
What it did end up becoming was my very first Linux server. I was also impressed by how it was perhaps the fastest 500mhz computer I've ever used. A lot of the hate for HPPA came from the weirdness of the OS itself and HP's really poor business choices, but the hardware was literally rock solid.
One of the things I was impressed it could do as well was host a Mumble server. Now Mumble was TeamSpeak clone 420 and the Linux nerd of the group chat I was in insisted on it every few months.
The problem is, as many /g/ foss user posts from back in the day talked about, this never worked. Every single Skype user would make excuses, but they were merely excuses as they would happily take Microsoft fisting them with outages/bad updates.
So there would be a cycle of this with chat groups. "Hey join our mumble server" and most people would join, but there was always this one person who couldn't figure out how to get voice working on his Wal-Mart trailer trash special laptop or Dell Optiplex (and in the Skype days these weren't too uncommon) and after a week we'd be back on Skype.
Still, I was impressed by the fact a 500mhz CPU with a dead arch could host a group chat of a few friends easily.
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So fast forward a few years. Hosting a server for your friend group has been replaced with the idea of federated servers, be it Matrix, XMPP, or the fediverse. Then Pleroma comes out and talks about how you can host it on a Raspberry Pi.
I'm not fond of RPis and I know the cost for them has gone way up thanks to the shortage. What is less trendy and easy to obtain is literally a shitbox Core 2 Duo PC. You can find them in any dump nearly anywhere in the world, even in some dumpster fire of a country. Everyone I know online whines about how every PC they can find for free or cheap is some Core 2 Duo. They're the epitome of "nobody wants this", but cpu wise one is much faster than this SPARC is.
As long as your ISP isn't screwing you over and not letting you open ports, you can host a Pleroma instance yourself and the best part is you don't need to drag your friends on it.
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Nowadays it's 2022 and well, the fedi is gaining a taste of mainstream popularity. Jim joined the fediverse and regardless of your opinion of him, he's maintained a cult fanbase who will follow him everywhere. This is where the strengths of the fedi shine.
Many people joined Poast but when they didn't get alone with that website's very specific community (which I understand 100%), they made their own instances.
Which is where the fediverse comes in. The fediverse isn't just something you sign up for like Twitter and have content fed to you curated by corporations/NGOs/Twitter Staff/"the algorithm"/the CIA, it's probably the most "organic" social media website since it's run by you, the user. No really. You can host your own server very easily and that's the point behind hosting it on this old Sun that has cousins in museums. If you're a misfit, you can join the fedi.
Jim joining the fedi and having users stay was no accident, but it shined on one of the advantages of the fedi. Before Jim joined, everyone else censored from the mainstream internet had been joining it. Everyone from the old-school nerds, fringe political dissidents, furries feeling out of place with the monoculture of the modern fandom, to shitposters online who wanted to laugh at the adventures of a fat man getting into fights with everyone on earth, to just random people who felt out of place on the enforced culture of Twitter.com. Even better is it feels more like an old forum or your old friend circle than Twitter does, and I feel more at home here than I ever did on Twitter. Okay there aren't artists on here, but you know what? I'd take feeling like I'm around people who aren't living Postal 2 NPCs over that.
I remember back in the day it was very common for a younger nerd or NEET to be hosting video games, websites, and files on a 1u server or old Dell Optiplex under his bed or in his closet. Or better, he'd host it on an old laptop with a smashed LCD and broken hinges and dust clogged fan running at maximum 24/7. I knew a lot of people like this and I still respect them.
If you're one of those nerds (you know who you are and I salute you), you can host a fediverse instance. Go to your local dumpster/thrift store/recycler and find a Core 2 Duo computer or buy some cheap i5 from eBay/some recycler, or get a thin client like a WYSE DX0Q. Slap Debian on it, and then slap on Pleroma with the guide. Set up a dynamic DNS via either no-ip or your domain provider, and forward ports 80 and 443, and make sure you have a directory so that let's encrypt can do it's thing.
Or pay like $5 for a VPS you find on lowendbox or even try Fediverse Express.
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@pawlicker
>Okay there aren't artists on here
there are really plenty of artists here and i only see that growing, especially if we market features like large upload limits and no compression on anything
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@opal Hell yeah :D
pawlicker
opal hart
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