snac2

Updating Mastodon: 20 minutes
Updating snac2: 2 minutes

#fediverse #mastodon #snac #snac2 #activitypub

Fortunately, @voron 's site on snac themes still has this screenshot, which I'm happy to share.

This response from the author of snac motivated me to continue, study, and appreciate this fantastic software for the Fediverse.
Snac is an example of true internet democracy: it runs everywhere and allows anyone to have their own autonomous, personal space in the Fediverse.

"Don't despair or quit", says an author who cares. And the Fediverse cares about them.

For today's #ThankYouTuesday, I want to thank grunfink - @grunfink - for the excellent work they do, quietly and with passion. I suggest that if you think snac is a good idea and you have the means, you offer them at least a coffee.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

#snac #snac2 #Fediverse #OwnYourData

Many speculated that #Betula can be turned into a microblogging server easily. It's true, one only has to hide the bookmarked URL, writing the text in the bookmark description.

Paying attention to the rising popularity of microblogs around the world, we've decided to make Betula into such an application. The next version, v2.0.0, will be the start of the new era. We'll focus on compatibility with the leading platforms such as #honk and #snac2 first.

I think I got it working now after remaking it lol
https://snac.9front.club/thedaemon
#snac2 #snac #FreeBSD

Huh, looks like #GoToSocial is a nice alternative to Mastodon, and sits somewhere in between Mastodon and #Snac2 in terms of resource usage. I feel like I should try it. Do I have enough time? No. But still I want to try it. Even has official FreeBSD support. Has anyone migrated from #Snac to GTS?

#TooManyHobbiesTooLittleTime

As announced, I also completed the Western #Frisian translation for #snac #snac2 and sent a PR for it. My Dutch PR was merged already \o/.

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2/pulls/452

I've just updated my #Snac instance to version 2.81 👍 🎉
You don't know Snac? But you should: https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2
A simple, minimalistic and well documented #ActivityPub instance server written in C, no database needed, totally JavaScript-free, no cookies either, not much bullshit.

#snac2 #fediverse #frugalfediverse

Started the first iteration of #snac (#snac2) customizing to match #manpageblog. It took a bite more time than initially expected but @grunfink indeed made some great and clever ideas when creating snac. The function for attributes and tags in his C functions are a great idea and simplify it. I guess, I simply had added them statically... However, a preview is available right here (as said, still not perfect, more to be done soon):

http://gyptazy.com/fedi/gyptazy/

#mastodon #alternatives #fediverse #activitypub #customizing

By the way: Snac has themes. If you don't like them, build your own 🙂
And Snac runs smoothly with various web clients (e.g. Elk, Semaphore, Phanpy) and, of course, with pretty much every mobile client.

#fediversepower #snac2 #snac #buildyourown

I've just updated my #Snac instance to version 2.83 👍 🎉
You don't know Snac? But you should: https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2
A simple, minimalistic and well documented #ActivityPub instance server written in C, no database needed, totally JavaScript-free, no cookies either, not much bullshit.

#snac2 #fediverse #frugalfediverse

Exactly one year ago, on 30th December 2024, I laid the foundation of FediMeteo.

I took a VM, installed FreeBSD, and set up the first jail to support Italy. The goal was to create a tool for my own use, support a few countries, and announce it.

Unexpectedly, the enthusiasm was incredible. That pushed me to keep going, support more countries and cities, and turn it into what it is today.

FediMeteo now supports 38 countries and 2,937 cities, with more than 7,700 followers in the Fediverse alone, not counting the many people who follow via RSS feeds or visit the web pages.

If you are curious to read the story and some technical details, you can find it here:
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/02/26/fedimeteo-how-a-tiny-freebsd-vps-became-a-global-weather-service-for-thousands/

Today is also Tuesday, a #ThankYouTuesday, so I want to say thanks to:

* OpenMeteo - @openmeteo - for providing accurate, high quality data, without which FediMeteo would be far less useful

* @grunfink - creator of snac, who made all of this possible using very few resources, on a 4 euro per month VM

* FreeBSD, which thanks to the efficiency of the OS and its jail implementation made it possible to run this service in a stable and efficient way with minimal effort

* FediFollows - @FediFollows - that periodically spreads the word about cities, countries, and the enthusiasm around the project

*All of you*, who suggested, encouraged, corrected, and celebrated this project

And forward toward supporting more countries and other interesting features already in the works.

Happy birthday, FediMeteo! 🎉

#FediMeteo #HappyBirthday #Meteo #Weather #FreeBSD #snac #snac2 #OpenMeteo #Fediverse

Are you in #tech and running your own #Fediverse instance? You might want to join an Activity Pub relay instance!

My relay at https://fedi-relay.gyptazy.com has currently 139 instances connected, mostly tech related sharing the same mindset and interests like #Linux, #BSD, #Ansible, #Proxmox, #Coding, and many more! You can easily join from your instance when using #Pleroma, #snac (#snac2), #Mastodon and its forks 🙂

#fedi #fediworld #fedicommunity #community #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #homelab #Python #Debian #RockyLinux #Feditips

Think I'm about ready to setup #snac2 and migrate to a small personal instance. Right now I'm stuck trying to decide what subdomain would be most clever/funny to use along with my heavy.rocks domain. This is always the hardest part. I guess the straightforward answer is snac.heavy.rocks. But that doesn't feel fun enough.

Anyone have experience using #Snac2 for a small activitypub instance? Currently I use #gotosocial which is great but I'm curious about other options. Running a second instance with a different domain for friends or a second account is appealing to me.

#selfhosting #activitypub

I've been testing #snac2 for a few days now, more specificly I want to see if it can replace my #friendica installation that I have been using since 2019. This will be a somewhat longer piece that is also meant to see how Snac copes with longer Markdown formatted text.

Friendica

First things first. Friendica is awesome. It is the everything and the kitchen sink of the Fediverse and does a lot of things right. The only downside I see is the reason why I am looking for an alterantive though. Over time it has become harder and harder to host Friendica on my vserver with 8GB of RAM. I could of course opt for a bigger server, but honestly I am only using a fraction of Friendica's features and would prefer something less demanding.

Snac

Snac is lightweight, easiy to install, uses no database and does not even require coockies or Javascript in its Web-UI. I mean, how cool ist that!

Compared to Friendica, its featureset is basic at best. But compared to other Fediverse tools like #mastodon it does not fare so bad. But how usable is it as an alternative to my peronal Friendica use.

The good stuff

Setup is really easy for anyone who has self-hosted any services before. The documentation in manpage format might be old school but it is very complete - read it. If you're on Debian you can even use the package from trixie-backports which is kept very current!

It shows the timeline chronologically but with nested threads. This is the only way that makes sense to me and is exactly what I use in Friendica (where different settings are available). This means every new activity on a thread brings it up again (partly collapsed) so you always see the necessary context to follow conversations. For me this is the most important feature, I would not even have continued testing without it. Snac just does it right!

It has the looks! Well at least after applying some stylesheets. Calling the vanilla install basic would already be an overstatement. But have a look at the styles that are linked from snac's Reaedme. I chose the next.css style and have attached an image of how it looks below. The screenshot is from an Android phone and this works remarkably well, even on mobile (some caveats below)!

It's compatible with Mastodon apps. I have only tested #Fedilab because I use it for other stuff too. Everything just works as expected. Although I have to admit, I like the native Web-UI (next.css) even more.

Long Text with Markdown formatting. 500 character per Toot - No thank you, I am not chatting here!

What is missing (or is it?)

There is only the timeline and you can follow Hashtags, that's it. No Channels, no groups, no theme-specific timelines. But honestly, I did not use any of that on Friendica, mainly for performance reasons. So this is a non-issue for me personally.

Following RSS feeds. This feature I will really miss. In Friendica I could direclty follow Feeds and interact with them from my timeline exactly like with ActivityPub Notes or Articles. I will have to use an external translation service or write my own for that (having written an ActivityPub related tool with tootgroup.py before.)

Message formatting is somewhat less flexible but this post shows what is possible still. Sometimes I like to put images in between paragraphs but not having that is also not a big deal.

Event Calendar. This is not a feature I expect Snac to support but I do use it on Friendica and will have to think about how to replace it.

What could be improved

I love that snac works without Javascript and cookies - that's exactly how I still build my webpages. But there is one usecase where a bit of one or the other would make life much easier - when using the Web-UI on mobile platforms.

I have already stated how great the mobile experience is when using the next.css stylesheet. The only downside is that I have to login with username/password again and again, every time the mobile browser is sent to sleep by Android.

Optionally enabling the use of a login cookie would make life much easier. Even better would be enabling Snac to be installed as a Progressive Web App, but I have to admit, I'm not sure how hard or feasible this would be.

Overall, I do not see many shortcomings with Snac. Obviously it offers less features than Friendica, but what it does, it does very well and at least in my view, the important stuff is exactly where it needs to be.

Conclusion

I am pretty impressed with snac. I'll be running my test server for a little bit longer but I do expect replace my Friendica install in the not too distant future.

Adding grunfink@comam.es because maybe you're interested. Please don't treat this as a feature-request or even critizism. It's mostly meant as info for people who have not tried snac yet.

finalized my patch for #snac2 for users to be able to moderate their own timelines with muted words

https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2/pulls/518

#snac2 2.84 with visibility scopes has been released!!

there’s also this thing that narrowly missed a release window if anyone wants an option to change it in reply -
https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2/pulls/493

tested on my instance and should be generally working