What is an instance? what is a federation? what is a server? can someone please describe in simple terms how this all runs and how we as users navigate it?
What is an instance? what is a federation? what is a server? can someone please describe in simple terms how this all runs and how we as users navigate it?
Instance == server == each individual lemmy (Beehaw is its own instance, so is lemmy.ca, etc)
Basically, reddit was a bunch of communities on one server (the reddit servers)
Each lemmy instance has its own collection of communities, and each lemmy is connected together, so users from any individual lemmy can read and interact with communities and users from other lemmys (this is federation)
All of these lemmy instances federating makes up the greater lemmy network as a whole
Thank you for this.
How does one go about finding communities from other instances and connect with them?
https://browse.feddit.de is great and so is https://subs.rehab
https://lemmyverse.net/ is a great tool for searching for communities and instances.
Use your instance’s search feature. You can search
No Stupid Questions!nostupidquestions@lemmy.worldhttps://lemmy.world/c/nostupidquestionsFirst option won’t work if your instance hasn’t federated the community yet. The last option is best in my opinion.
Some small addition to the last option:
If you want to browse a community from a specific instance on your home instance you have to add the ‘home’ instance.
For example your home instance (where you did register your account) is Lemmy.ml and the community you want to interact with is on Lemmy.world you would use:
Https://Lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]
In order to be able to post, reply etc
Overall great explanation, accurate and short.
The one thing I dislike is the usage of ‘lemmy’, which you seem to use as a synonym for ‘instance’. That is both inconsistent (you already established terms for that; ‘instance’ and ‘server’), and inaccurate.
Lemmy is the whole, the network of federated and defederated instances.