BSD Cafe Billboard

Do you want to see a #littleFedi instance's directory? Here it is. It's all here. littleone@littleone:~/littleone $ ls -l total 2534224 drwx------ 5 littleone littleone 5 Oct 12 21:23 backups drwxr-xr-x 30 littleone littleone 30 Oct 13 16:22 blogs -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 28676230 Oct 12 11:19 littlefedi-freebsd-amd64 -rw------- 1 littleone littleone 4367925248 Oct 13 19:56 littlefedi.db -rw------- 1 littleone littleone 98304 Oct 13 12:20 littlefedi.db-shm -rw------- 1 littleone littleone 108442552 Oct 13 19:56 littlefedi.db-wal -rw------- 1 littleone littleone 3645 Sep 30 19:48 littlefedi.toml drwxr-x--- 402 littleone littleone 402 Oct 13 16:43 media #littleOne

Dear #littleOne friends, A new build of littleFedi is now powering this instance! We've made several changes based on reports from our friends on this instance, feedback from those who have started self-hosting, and code reviews by the Little Computer People. There are still a few things to integrate, but this will probably be the next build we release (likely tomorrow or on the 14th, two weeks after the previous release). I'm attaching a non-exhaustive changelog: Alt text changed while editing a post from a Mastodon client (Mastodon web, Phanpy, Elk, Ivory, Tusky and others) was silently dropped. It is now saved and sent to other servers with the edit. Alt text of images already attached to a post can now be edited from the web composer. When a remote author adds or changes alt text by editing a post, the change now shows up here too. Before, the post kept its old description, and stayed hidden for anyone filtering out media without alt text. PUT /api/v1/media/:id can now clear a description, and refuses media that is already attached to a post, as Mastodon does. Use the status edit instead. Alt text is limited to 1500 characters on the server too, not only in the browser. Longer remote descriptions are cut at the same length. The limit is reported as description_limit in /api/v2/instance. Media without alt text now report description as null in the API, so clients no longer show an empty ALT badge. New Favourites page in the web interface, in the main menu, listing the posts you liked, most recent first. Paging through /api/v1/favourites skipped or repeated posts after the first page. It now continues from the last post shown, like bookmarks. When the timeline tabs or the top menu do not fit on one line, they now show only their icons. Before, some themes cut the last items off or split them over two rows. Keep the canonical instance actor URL public in secure and allowlist modes, fixing a key-fetch deadlock with other authorized-fetch servers. With split domains, /api/v1/instance now reports the handle domain as uri, and actors carry a webfinger property with their canonical handle. Hashtags can now be followed from the search in Settings > Followed hashtags, even before any post uses them. Hashtag pages with non-ASCII names, such as #caffè, now open and follow correctly. New [web] redirect_guests_to_about sends signed-out visitors from / to /about, and [web] public_blog_directory = false puts /blogs and its sitemap index behind the login. public_local_timeline = false now also hides the links to the local timeline and asks for login on /public/local and when scrolling, not only on /. Signed-out visitors could load the federated and bubble timelines through the scrolling endpoint. They now get the login page. Moved profiles now show the destination and replace Follow with a link to the new account. Old posts remain accessible, and cached account data is refreshed as soon as the move is saved. Move notifications now show and link to the destination, while the account name still opens the original profile. Moves by different users stay in separate notification rows when grouping is enabled. Cached timelines now pick up new posts when blog publishing is enabled, without waiting for the page cache to expire. Incoming boosts also update open timelines through streaming. Profile bios can now contain up to 5,000 characters in the web editor, up from 500. The notifications page now has a Mark all as read button. Clear all still deletes them. Follows imported from CSV are now saved before the upload is confirmed and resume after a restart. Settings and the API show progress, existing follows and failed lookups. Follow requests and their outgoing deliveries are saved together, and only one import can run per account. This uses the existing database schema. CSV files over migration.max_follows_import are now rejected instead of being silently truncated. Set the limit to 0 to import the whole file. CSV imports now leave an internal notification when they finish or stop after a terminal error, with a summary and a link to that import. Retries do not duplicate the notice; no email or push is sent. Multiple Mastodon API Fixes Replies in the web interface now keep the original post's content warning, both in the timeline and on the thread page. Media can be added to a post by dragging files onto the composer or by pasting an image, as well as with the file picker. Files dropped elsewhere on the page go to the main composer instead of replacing the page. #littleFedi

Hi friends! Now that littleFedi has been released and new instances are starting to appear, we can focus again on development and testing. From now on, the littleFedi accounts on this instance will work like this: The announcement - @littlefedi_official - account will be used for announcements: new releases and important communications. It will be a very low-traffic account, so I suggest following it with some attention. A new build, by the way, is not far away... There will also be an account dedicated to hints, where we will publish, notice the plural , tips, tricks and useful little things about littleFedi. It does not exist yet, but I will create and announce it as soon as possible. This account will remain more general, as it is now, although of course it will mainly talk about littleFedi. This instance will remain our test instance. New builds and new features will be tested here before their public release. For now, the littleFedi development model will also remain the same: the developers develop, fix, experiment and, when something is ready, a new version is released. Open Source is freedom, not conformity. littleFedi has its own history, its own way of growing and its own direction. We will keep following them, without trying to imitate a model just because it is the most common one in the Open Source world. Open Source was born to let people do things differently. littleFedi is free. #littleFedi #littleOne #Fediverse

@fedipete @littlefedi_official someone already tried. I think it worked!

Welcome to the world of tomorrow! Yes, exactly. This instance has tomorrow's build date. That's because littleFedi will be released tomorrow, and I've just made the final builds. They'll be tested on this instance today before being made public. Not long now... #littleFedi #littleOne #Fediverse #OwnYourData

How littleFedi will be released The release of littleFedi is scheduled for 1 October 2026. The release will happen in phases but, from the very first day, it will be possible to use the software in its entirety. Tests and complete documentation are still under heavy revision and will not be ready by then, but we do not want to postpone the release any further. The code has already been reviewed by several people, who gave us feedback and suggestions I cared a lot about. I want to thank everyone who did it. You know who you are. There will probably be many bugs because, and this also came out during the reviews, although I already knew it, the quality of the code is not uniform yet. littleFedi was created by different people, at different times, working on different components and with different levels of experience. And it shows: some parts of the code are of good quality. Others are not. The reviews of the last few months tried to make things more consistent, but clearly this is not an easy task. In the end, what matters to me is not that the code is beautiful, but that it is sufficiently lean and secure. So far, the reviews performed have not found security problems serious enough to block the release. Everything else can be fixed along the way. For the moment, distribution will not happen through BSD Cafe Brew, our Forgejo instance, but directly from the littleFedi website: https://littlefedi.org You will be able to download a source tarball, or latest, which will simply point to the same tarball. Inside the binaries directory there will also be around 180 precompiled builds for the different platforms and all the possible feature combinations, for example PostgreSQL + S3. Blog support will be included in all precompiled builds. Of course, those binaries have not been tested on every single platform. I do not have an AIX/ppc64 machine available, let alone a Windows machine. But they compile, and at this stage that is enough for me. For the moment, there will not be fixed releases. New builds and source releases will be published whenever appropriate, distributed in the same way. The goal is to eventually publish everything on BSD Cafe Brew, our Forgejo instance, but this will happen when tests, complete documentation and the rest are ready too. In practice, at this stage the team prefers to keep more direct control over releases and the management of code, patches and so on. The license is still MIT, so there is maximum freedom to use and modify the software. This is simply what the team has chosen for now. The official announcement account will be this one, hosted on the littleOne instance: @littlefedi_official@littleone.littlefedi.social https://littleone.littlefedi.social/@littlefedi_official littleOne will remain online as a test instance. I would not really call it the "official" littleFedi instance, but almost. In the future we may create a larger instance using PostgreSQL, S3 and so on. But this is not really the purpose of littleFedi. littleFedi is about decentralisation and control over your own data. In an ideal world, everyone would have their own Fediverse software, their own instance, different levels of federation, like Bubbles, which still need some refinement in littleFedi, and allowlists and/or blocklists. For now, this is just a small step in that direction, adding another alternative to already excellent software such as Mastodon, snac, GoToSocial, Akkoma, Mitra and others. 1 October is close, and the release will be accompanied by a post containing some background information and details that have never been revealed before. Those details will also help explain some of the technical choices behind the software itself, and why I am the one presenting it to the world. I have not decided yet whether I will publish it here or on my IT Notes blog, but it will definitely be announced. We are almost there. It has been a long journey to reach this point, and the best part has not even started yet. Fasten your seat belts, we are ready to go again! #littleFedi #littleOne #Fediverse #OwnYourData

littleFedi will be released on 1 October 2026.#littleFedi #littleOne #Fediverse #OwnYourData

@utrenkner @stefano@littleone.littlefedi.social true!

And this one on a small VPS and powered by FreeBSD #littleOne #littleFedi