Post by @vortex@tldr.nettime.org
This is the first genuinely operational littleFedi instance.
It has been online since 1st July, is single-user (just me), and runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero W powered by NetBSD, directly on its SD card.
It consumes just under 1W.
Its database is this size:
-rw------- 1 little wheel 109289472 Aug 26 15:14 littlefedi.db
That is, just a little over 100 MB. Yes, MB.
Its average CPU load is extremely low.
It is perfectly usable both from the web interface and from Mastodon API apps.
I have 401 followers and 169 followings, and it doesn't bat an eye.
I promise myself to use it more, and I will.
You don't need Big Tech to communicate with others.
You don't need an expensive data center to exist online.
Because we are people, and the bits are just extensions of our voice.
EDIT: littleFedi allows to transform posts into blog posts, having its own SSG (Static Site Generator). The one generated by this post is reachable by clicking here.
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@stefano Hi. I'm a Berlin based Australian & Devuan OS image maintainer for all models of RPi ARM hardware. Would it be possible to join your early limited access to source code, as I would very much like to demo your work on little fedi at the upcoming Berlin FediDay event https://ctix.c-base.org/fediday/fediday26/ Thanks for your work!
@vortex@tldr.nettime.org Hello Adam! Thank you for contacting me. I'll ask the team but I know they wouldn't like to send out the code until it'll be "decent enough" as there are still some things that need to be fixed and cleaned up.
Anyway, I'll try to ask and tell you something ASAP.
@stefano Thanks!
This Raspberry Pi Zero 2W Rev 1.0 is offering guest WiFi networking to the laptop that is powering it over USB through it's own wireless connection. This is achieved through one of my work-in-progress projects [DevuanPi Gadgeteer](https://github.com/adam-burns/devuan-pi-gadgeteer).
The DevuanPi also sports a wireguard connection providing routable IPv4 & IPv6 public routing.
All of this is certainly not production ready, so also with full disclaimers, I would very much like, together with other attendants, to attempt to get #littleFedi up on this host in a workshop at the Berlin Fediday, and give you feedback on the attempt.
I have a slot booked at the event, but would need to get back to the organisers very soon to confirm.
Thanks for your consideration & please let me know your decision as soon as you can so I can get back to the organisers.
Thanks & waves from Berlin.
@vortex@tldr.nettime.org hello, thank for the explanation. It seems extremely cool. The team, despite my efforts, doesn’t seem too convinced in sharing the sources, yet, as they still need to clean up. I’ll try to ask again, but meantime I’m asking you: would it still be ok to have a binary and not the entire source code, yet? I know it’s not optimal, but still something. Just in case they say no.
@stefano Hi Stefano, Thanks for your reply. I'm enthusiatic about your work, so yes I would take up the offer of a binary, although as you say it's not optimal to present such work to active open source advocates when only available in binary form. I would urge your development team to consider public source release "warts and all".
Only my opinion, but from what I understand from your fedi posts, you've developed something that can only grow, evolve and get better from this point.
When releasing some of my more experimental work, one of my favourite joke-like mutterings to myself is "Apart from self-respect and pride what have I got to lose?". Erm, nothing?
Regardless, thank you for your reply and let me know how it would be possible to pick up the binary.
Also, if you are available, please consider joining us for interview/demo via remote link up.
It would be lovely to link up live to hear of further details of the #littlefedi future evil plans 😈
@vortex@tldr.nettime.org Thank you, and I really appreciate both the enthusiasm and the gentle push towards releasing the source. I completely understand your point about "warts and all", and in principle I very much agree with it. 😉
There are really two things making us cautious at the moment.
The first is that the code still contains, in comments and in a few implementation details, references to some of the developers who have chosen to remain completely anonymous, including for security reasons. Before making the source public, we need to make absolutely sure that nothing in there can accidentally identify or point back to them.
The second is federation. There are a few parts of it that we want to test more thoroughly before releasing the code. An occasional federation problem on one experimental instance is one thing. The same problem reproduced across tens or hundreds of instances would be quite another... So we are being perhaps a little overcautious there, but deliberately so.
Those are really the main reasons for the hesitation. It is not about keeping littleFedi closed. The public source release is still the goal, and I expect it to happen within the next few weeks.
In the meantime, I will talk to the others and see whether we can at least send you the complete source privately, rather than just the binary, with the small favour that you don't show, redistribute or publish it until the official release. I can't promise that yet, because I want to respect everyone's wishes, but I will certainly ask.
And thank you very much for the invitation too! Under normal circumstances I would have been very happy to join you for an interview/demo and talk about our future evil plans 😈
But I'll be at EuroBSDCon around those days, where I'll also be giving a talk:
https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/talk/KAEQA8/
So I expect to be rather busy while I'm there. But I really appreciate the invitation, and hopefully there will be another opportunity soon. By then, perhaps the evil plans will have become even more evil. 😆
Thanks again for the interest and support. It genuinely means a lot.
I m bumping myself into this thread, because we would also be really interested in replicating this, once you are comfortable sharing code,
in the context of our #pOSTcOLLAPSEnETWORKING workshops.
Mainly to demonstrate to a new generation of curious and determined people what the #internet was meant to be initially, and what can be done.