I’ve heard a few people on here are starting their own personal instances so they can federate independently with different instances without relying on a larger, third-party instance. If I wanted to do this, would I need to own an actual server, separate from my PC?
Yup! Or you could pay someone like these guys to set up and manage the server for you. I’ve never used them myself, but the pricing looks reasonable.
I see, I suppose it’s out of my price range at the moment. Good to keep in mind, though, thanks!
24/7 online, yeah pretty much. There are people that host instances at home but they most likely already have a small homeserver setup.
eh, I used to host a minecraft server on my main rig back in the day and it’s just not worth introducing that kind of instability onto your daily driver.
pay the ~$10/mo to set up your own instance on a VM somewhere, you’ll have a better experience.
Your own PC is technically possible, depending on if your ISP allows it. However I really don’t recommend that. I started with a $5 per month VPS and upgraded to a $10 option now that my instance has dozens of users.
You can also pay monthly for a virtual private server (VPS) through something like DreamHost. You basically let them house and manage the hardware while you personally control the software. It’s like renting from a server hotel instead of buying your own server house. Prices are pretty cheap too, imo.
If you want to make it the easy way, yes. If you can handle using Linux as your sole daily driver system (or can manage to configure a virtual machine to run on boot over Windows while opening all the required ports in both Windows and the VM): not necessarily
If you are going to be the only user, no you can put it on your PC. It become unresponsive when your PC sleeps. It will cache everything on the network you subscribe to (meaning that stuff takes up space on your hard drive), and if you create a community on it, the entire fediverse will depend on your PC being on and reachable, over whatever internet/WiFi you have at the time. Your need to buy a domain name and set up TLS certificates, and configure your router and firewall to safely allow incoming traffic.
There really is no upside to running and instance on a workstation PC other than development testing. You need a server, and they suck down electricity like you don’t even know (trust me, i have 3). Find a good and cheap VPS if you really want to get your feet wet with this. I vote for Hetzner but there are tons out there.
Or, check out the selfhosted community if you are interested in learning how to do your own servers. It’s a damn rabbit hole but can be very rewarding!
You mean to only use this instance yourself, for you alone?
That’s an interesting idea, and I have not found clear answers or downsides.
If you don’t let others join, and do not host any communities yourself, why not?
I HOST MINE THROUGH linode
