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Why is it so annoyingly hard to set up a Fediverse node? (feddit.de)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Everyone (and their mother) have been trying to convince me that I should use one of my less loaded servers to be a Fediverse node. However, all Fediverse software packages I checked only support being installed on complicated systemd + Docker machines. My servers don't have either of those, because neither systemd nor Docker even exist on OpenBSD and illumos.

I know that it would be possible to manually install (e.g.) Lemmy, assuming that I won't ever need official support, but I wonder why the world outside a limited subset of the Linux ecosystem is - at most - an afterthought for Fediverse developers.

How can I help to change that?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Calling OpenBSD "ducked taped together" feels rather crassly inaccurate. I won't pretend it's particularly modernized, but thats not a requirement for a lot of people using it. For many use cases, including many of mine, OpenBSD is easily the most consistent and quality Unix environment out there.

OpenBSD has, for a very long time, had their own isolation features, and have their own implementation of a myriad of modern kernel functionality. What they explicitly do not have is clones of Linux syscalls, which is why things like Docker (and Wayland, for that matter) do not work. And while unfortunate, I do not believe every Unix-like should be forced to imitate the Linux syscall API, as that is exactly what leads to the "duct taped" feeling other Unix-likes suffer from.

That said, I also do not blame FOSS developers for deprioritizing OpenBSD as a platform, as it is one of the smallest actively maintained Unix systems, and time is not infinite.