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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: October 21st, 2025

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  • Appreciate the confirmation. I actually checked GamingOnLinux before doing the math, but they hadn’t updated their graphs yet for March.

    Since I did the math correct the first time, I’m going to double down and math again!

    Non-Steam Deck Linux % for English Language: 8.63%

    Math: (Linux English / Overall English) * ((Linux Overall - SteamOS Linux % of Overall) / (Overall - SteamOS Linux % of Overall) = (82.75% / 39.09%) * ((5.33% - 1.30%) / (100% - 1.30%)) = 8.63%

    SteamOS Linux % of Overall = Linux Overall * SteamOS Linux = 5.33% * 24.48% = 1.30%

    Assumptions: % of English Language usage is uniform across all Distros; Probably another assumption, but it’s not coming to me right now.








  • What is Catadon:

    Catodon is open source software for building federated communities

    Catodon is a fork of Sharkey, but with many features ported from Firefish, and some new ones! Its target is to provide a smoother, more comprehensible UX - so terminology is simplified and made more descriptive, and several features of Misskey/Sharkey that were not widely used or not federated were removed from the frontend. There is also an attempt to make the design more minimal wherever possible - see the redesigned posting form for example. One of the main design goals is to make something more user-friendly, where you can invite your friends and they can adjust easily.

    Please join our Matrix space at #catodon-space:matrix.org for direct communication! Feedback and code reviews are much appreciated.

    Main differences from Sharkey:

    • A new, rounder look!
    • You can follow hashtags and words in you Home timeline, by adding Custom feeds (Antennas) to Home
    • You can integrate GIF search for your users through Klipy
    • Improved notifications: Added a “mark all as read” button to the Notifications widget, there is a highlighted divider between new and old notifications, and they are marked read easier when you view them, so that you no longer need to use the “mark all as read” button as much. You can also see a list of who reacted in grouped reaction notifications
    • Threads in timelines (imported from Firefish), greatly decluttering timelines for longer threads
    • Users now have the choice to link to external media (including GIFs) without permanently saving them to their Storage, using a new dedicated cache - allows admins to provide less permanent storage space per user, keeping server resources under control
    • There is a global, admin-definable cap to the cache for remote files, so that you no longer need to manually delete it regularly
    • Different/simpler terminology so that new users can understand what everything means more easily
    • Decluttered buttons under posts: Like/Reaction (merged), Reply, Repost/Quote (merged)
    • Deprecated/removed from the frontend the gamifying or local only/not widely used features: Channels, Achievements, Gallery, Clips, Games, Chat, Play
    • Redesigned left sidebar. Much fewer items in the Navigation Bar, which now expands/collapses with a button. The profile picture now acts as a direct link to your profile, as it’s separated from the account menu that sits under it
    • Fewer timelines, no hardcoded links in the header menu - everything is a timeline
    • “Accounts timeline” based on the “Following” page, but upgraded to a timeline with columns scrolling independently and a search bar
    • The local timeline now takes the server’s short name, adding a unique touch to your community
    • Custom feeds and Lists are in their own dedicated timeline
    • More filters in timelines and Lists - you can now view your following accounts’ replies to others (or only to accounts you also follow) in Home, choose between Following and Mutual followers, and include the public posts from your server in Home (covering the functionality of the deprecated “Social” timeline)
    • Post area is now clickable everywhere, not only over the text area
    • You can view all reactions together under a post in detailed post view (added “All” tab). You can also see the total number of replies+subreplies next to the number of direct replies, showing instantly how deep the discussion under a post goes
    • Redesigned posting form with buttons in more practical positions - also the collapsed posting form at the top of timelines takes up half the space the old one did
    • The posting form autoexpands as you write longer posts - imported from Firefish
    • Autocomplete also shows results for names of users - you no longer need to remember the exact username to mention or DM someone
    • You can disable sign-in emails by deactivating sign-in notifications
    • You can now close the alt text window over images, which can make parts of them hard to see/read, by clicking on it
    • Much better key navigation - both with h/j/k/l and arrows. Focus is more often where you expect it to be, so that you can key nav instantly when opening a page. You can also swipe through timelines on desktop with left/right
    • Countless bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements!

    Only server i found: https://catodon.rocks/


  • Yeah, I think ego management is probably going to be important too.

    I recall a wave of users trying to create tension/issues between Piefed and Lemmy a couple months ago. They were heavily down voted. So, it fizzled out to my knowledge, but I might have just blocked them and moved on.

    Hopefully users remain resistant to those kinds of agitations.

    Assuming community migration is currently a thing, I wonder if not wanting to start issues between software or instances is part of the reason it hasn’t been widely publicized.


  • I’ve heard in the past that Lemmy, Piefed, and Mbin devs talk to each other about how to implement features.

    So, I’m hopefully it’s interoperable, but have no real information to go on that it will/would be.

    Did a quick search through Piefed’s code repository. I don’t see community migration, but they are working on instance migration (Lemmy instance could become a Piefed instance).

    Edit: Looks like community migration could already be a thing and been a thing for potentially 6 months. Huh.


  • I think a few things help Piefed over Lemmy.

    Piefed development seems to be much faster. Piefed is at v1.7, while its been 12+ months since Lemmy devs said they would delivery v1.0 in 6 months (probably still a few months away from v1.0).

    Additionally, Piefed doesn’t have the “tankie” problem. Arguments have been made that it’s not a “real” problem because of the option to defederate, but from what I’ve seen (ex. Reddit posts/comments) the reputation damage is still in effect, regardless of it’s a “real” problem or not.

    When will Lemmy disappear? I doubt it really will. Since it federates with other software (ex. Piefed) it never has to really worry about having too few users. If Lemmy has 1 user and Piefed has 1M users, Lemmy has access to 1M+1 users (same reason why Piefed has been able to grow so fast, it can lean on Lemmy’s userbase).

    Really though, if development significantly slowed or stopped, I suspect Lemmy would still last years (ex. I think there is still a kmbin instance even though mbin forked off a couple years (?) ago).

    I think it will be a very interesting day when communities can move instances (I believe that is being worked on). That will remove a large amount of instance inertia and I would expect to see some major community migrations to other instances.

    Edit: mbin to kbin





  • Having looked at these numbers regularly I would say there is a natural ebb and flow to the services.

    Certainly some of the services are having significant struggles (ex. Bookwym), but overall the fediverse seems to be getting stronger.

    Where I get that from is that most of the services had huge initial spikes when they were announced. Unfortunately, they do not appear to have had feature parity with proprietary options and quickly lost their huge spikes. After their massive drops after release, they appear to be working on improving their service and (generally) have steadily been gaining users back.

    TLDR: if you ignore the initial release growth spike and subsequent drops, most of the services have been improving their features and growing back their userbase.

    Edit: To your mastodon point, its down year-over-year but has gained ~60k MAU in the last 6 months.