Dear friends of the BSD Cafe,

As 2024 comes to an end, it’s time to reflect on what we’ve built together during the first full year of life for BSD Cafe. Launched on 20 July 2023, this project has grown far beyond what I could have imagined. While I haven’t tracked full uptime data, I can confidently say that the downtime was less than 30 minutes overall - even though the main VM hosting our services moved multiple times (including a switch from a Proxmox hypervisor to bhyve on FreeBSD, for the sake of alignment with our mission). In a world filled with over-engineered HA systems, we’ve outperformed many “big-name” cloud providers. Not bad for a community project, right?

For me, this has been an incredible journey. The users here are not just participants - they’re collaborators, and their positivity has been inspiring. The content shared and created at BSD Cafe has been valuable not only to the BSD community but beyond. What truly sets BSD Cafe apart is the openness for dialogue and exchange. Whether it’s social media posts, Matrix discussions, repositories in our brew, or RSS feeds, people seem to genuinely appreciate what we create and the conversations we foster.

BSD Cafe is a journey - one that grows, evolves, and continues. Our goal isn’t endless growth (we’re a community, not a business) but rather to maintain a welcoming, inclusive space where everyone feels a sense of positivity and belonging. For me, opening any service with “bsd.cafe” in the domain brings joy and pride. That’s the spirit I’ve tried to convey, and I hope it resonates with all of you, whether you’re active BSD Cafe users or friends of the community.

Promoting self-hosting and #OwnYourData has, as a side effect, inspired some users to “go solo” with their own setups. But even then, they remain part of BSD Cafe - in spirit, in purpose, and in connection.

Here’s a look at what we’ve achieved together this year:

- mastodon.bsd.cafe: 370 total users
Active in the past month: 207
Active in the past six months: 286
- snac.bsd.cafe: 14 total users
Active in the past month: 7
- blendit.bsd.cafe: 61 registered users
- matrix.bsd.cafe: 23 users
- brew.bsd.cafe: 29 users - 80 repositories
- freshrss.bsd.cafe: 25 users
- miniflux.bsd.cafe: 11 users
- press.bsd.cafe: 9 users
- myip.bsd.cafe: Constantly used by various users
- wiki.bsd.cafe: Could use a bit more love and content, but it fulfills its role as a functional homepage.
- tube.bsd.cafe: Still in testing - Peertube 7.0 update is on the way.

For detailed stats from our reverse proxy and general router (excluding media services, which generate most traffic but are handled via caching reverse proxies), you can check here - updated hourly: https://netstats.bsd.cafe

The journey of BSD Cafe continues, and I look forward to seeing where 2025 will take us. Together, we’ve built something special - something driven by passion, shared purpose, and a little bit of the BSD magic that makes all of this possible.

Here’s to a new year full of joy, serenity, and connection. Thank you for being part of this adventure.

Wishing you all a fantastic 2025 - and THANK YOU!
Stefano

#BSDCafe #BSDCafeServices #BSDCafeAnnouncements #BSDCafeUpdates #Fediverse #HappyNewYear #Mastodon #Snac #snac2 #lemmy #matrix #dokuwiki #forgejo #freshrss #miniflux #wallabag #peertube #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #RunBSD #BSD

@Dimas I'm quite partial to #gotosocial - lightweight, works like a charm, the devs seem be quite competent. Might need some memory when booting but after that it quietly sits in a corner and just functions.

I've heard good things about #snac as well, but no personal experience.

My relay at https://fedi-relay.gyptazy.com has currently 139 instances connected, mostly tech related sharing the same mindset and interests like #Linux, #BSD, #Ansible, #Proxmox, #Coding, and many more! You can easily join from your instance when using #Pleroma, #snac (#snac2), #Mastodon and its forks 🙂

#fedi #fediworld #fedicommunity #community #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #homelab #Python #Debian #RockyLinux #Feditips

My favorite #fediverse platforms are #snac and #GoToSocial

Change my mind.

@grunfink #snac

Alt...

SINCE YOU LEFT ME I'VE BEEN SNACPILLED comam.es/what-is-snac

The language in which a post is written can now be set from the UI; you must configure the list of languages you usually post in in the User Settings.

Added support for bullet points in posts (lines starting with an asterisk or a hyphen, plus a space).

Added Dutch (nl_NL) translation (contributed by martijndeb).

Added Western Frisian (fy_NL) translation (contributed by martijndeb).

Mastodon API: Fixed repeated entries in timelines.

Added nodeinfo 2.1 support.

Fixed boosts from the command line not showing in the public timeline (contributed by xvello).

Updated several language files (contributed by zen and daltux).

Retrieving a post's replies is now possible via ActivityPub.

https://comam.es/what-is-snac

If you find #snac useful, please consider buying grunfink a coffee or contributing via LiberaPay.

#snacAnnounces #FrugalFediverse

Fixed my fedi_slurp scripts & documentation to work with #GotoSocial in addition to #snac (in theory it should work with plain old mastodon but I never tested)
https://code.lema.org/santiago/fedi_slurp

This goes through your fediverse bookmarks and adds them to your readeck instance or youtube watch list automatically. New release handles having several fediverse accounts (but only saved to one readeck instance / youtube watchlist).

One slightly weird thing I had is that inbound #ipv6 traffic on both SSH and HTTPS was returning a "connection reset by peer" for a while. It seems to be working now, but if some IPv6 folks can check https://cablespaghetti.dev loads properly over v6 for them now, it would put my mind at rest.

I may have to move it to slightly more powerful hardware for my own sanity…

I tried tuning various parameters but after some reading came to the conclusion that lots of small files with very little RAM is about the worst case scenario for XFS.

#linux #snac #btrfs

I don't know how many web sites out there implement Webmention (I guess very few), but given that it has been very simple to implement, here it is.

Long live the non-big-tech Internet.

#Webmention #IndieWeb

I quickly restarted the service from the platform but then it got killed again and I didn’t notice until this evening. I have now rebooted the server, maybe that will help until I get home from my camping trip with my kids.

For those who don’t care about my latest ADHD obsession, don’t worry I’m sure I’ll move on to a different one soon, and here’s a steam train…

Alt...

A black narrow 2’ gauge steam train with people around it on the Brecon Mountain Railway. The plaque on the front says it was made in Philadelphia in 1930.

https://cablespaghetti.dev/hosting-a-fediverse-instance-on-an-original-raspberry-pi.html

#snac #snac2 #alpinelinux #linux #raspberrypi

Here's a script to backup to Backblaze B2 with just Jq as an additional dependency (and the included curl, tar, openssl etc.). It works so far...

https://gist.github.com/cablespaghetti/01862b9d8252223719cbe2586145f686