Friendica

Snac

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 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

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.

Alt...

Screenshot of the Snac Web user interface running with the next.css style sheet

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.

I do struggle more and more with #friendica's ressource requirements on my small vserver, I thought to try something more lightweight for a change.

#snac2 it is - @andi is a my account on a temporary test server. Setup was quickly done using the #Debian trixie-backport package and I like what I see. Now for some testing - Feel free to interact if you're interested in snac. Account and Server will be deleted afterwards.

"Release Notes:
Hide EmojiReacts from muted actors and blocked instances."
Well, yes! Thanks!

You don't know Snac? But you should: https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2

The Fediverse is much larger than a large Mastodon. Consider setting up your own small server, Snac is easy to install and enjoyable to use.
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

#snac2 #fediverse #frugalfediverse

Consider #Snac2 as a cheap (in both resources and money) alternative to #Mastodon.

You don't even need a vps: it can run as a (fast) cgi.

You can check its accessibility on https://comam.es/snac/grunfink (that's one of the public instance view, obviusly the interface to post is different: your browser needs to properly support details/summary tag to works fine)

Have you already grown tired of waiting for #Mastodon to implement some proper #Markdown support ?

You still can't believe to be waiting for such a simple feature on 2026?

Well .. you can keep waiting until you grow varicose veins on your legs, or just move to #snac2 , call it a 9 years old and be done with it! 🥳

https://comam.es/snac-doc/snac.5.html

@jwildeboer @MastodonEngineering or maybe we could stop waiting and move to #snac2 for good ..

https://comam.es/snac-doc/snac.5.html

You can simply use relay instances to be interconnected with other instances to exchange posts and it works seamless with #Mastodon, #Pleroma, #snac / #snac2 and many other ones! If you're in tech, you might want to use:

https://fedi-relay.gyptazy.com

You can simply add it to get a bigger reach but also to get more interesting content into your own timeline which becomes even more important on single user- & smaller instances.

#activitypub #mastodon #fediverse #opensource #bsd #runbsd #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #dragonflybsd #debian #proxmox #xcpng #talos #coding #programming #fediwall #relay #fedirelay #acitivitypubrelay #selfhost #homelab #community

Alt...

Activity Pub / Fediverse Relay

#FediMeteoAnnouncements #FediMeteo #FediMeteoUpdates #snac #snac2

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

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@fosstodon.org - for providing accurate, high quality data, without which FediMeteo would be far less useful

• @grunfink@comam.es - 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@social.growyourown.services - that periodically spreads the word about cities, countries, and the enthusiasm around the 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

I've been experimenting with lightweight activitypub tools like gotosocial and snac2.

So far snac2 works, but seems incompatible with basically every frontend I've tried.

gotosocial is more compatible, but crashes randomly and won't stay online for 24hrs at a time.

What am I doing wrong here?

Anyone have any tips?

#ActivityPub #Fediverse #gotosocial #snac2

Originally created as a temporary setup to experiment with #snac, I later decided to keep it online. For about a year now, it’s been my most 'private', less technical corner. And I couldn’t be happier: it runs in a #FreeBSD jail, uses almost zero resources, and is always ready to serve me.

Happy birthday, FediHome!

#FediVersary #Anniversary #Birthday #snac2 #Fediverse