It has been nagging me a lot, but I finally decided to shut down my Pixelfed server.
There are several reasons. Here are the ones off the top of my mind.
- Pixelfed governance is unclear and its maintenance is spotty and obscure. The project has no clear roadmap and it all feels very off. Even though I was enthusiastic about @PixelfedGlitch, it still seems like this fork is not attracting enough interest and participation to establish a forward-looking plan.
- Beyond governance, I share these concerns.
- I don’t want to maintain a whole instance merely for a single profile—especially after it has been inactive for a long while. Friends and folks who are curious and interested in exploring the Fediverse are welcome to join pan.rent, that is a collective, communal, and cosy instance.
- I am having trouble with the pixelfed_ynh package for YunoHost. PHP dependencies are a mess and services constantly fail. I believe it’s not the fault of YunoHost packaging, but I am no expert, just a feeling. No energy and not worth figuring it out. I tried for a while, I gave up.
- I am generally against the idea of having multiple Fediverse accounts on multiple servers for different uses. Instead, I believe we should improve filtering and sorting posts depending on their type, and having one single account linked to one identity. Overall, Mastodon Glitch Edition does the job for my occasional image and video posting, even if it’s not optimal.
- I want to use the domain https://tmi.pics for a different purpose, probably an Immich server.
Now, a question for all the sysads out there: what are the best practices you recommend before shutting the server down? I have a strong emotional attachment to the ~15 pictures and posts I have on my profile there.
What I am doing, so far:
- saving all Web pages of profiles and posts on the Wayback Machine
- performing and archiving a YunoHost backup of the application
- ?
#Pixelfed #YunoHost #Fediverse #PixelfedAdmin #admin #FediAdmin #sysAd #systemAdministration #sysAdmin
