To me now, Mastodon social network is fun and friendly with supportive people easily found around field I love and they are quite active. This month, I shared many things with many people including GNU/Linux, Free Software, and surprisingly Ubuntu Phone! I learned here that PinePhone with UBPorts collaboration has been awesomely trending recently. And many more interesting stuffs. This article is my adventure summary in Mastodon I wish to be helpful to you. Now let's see the story!
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How to play with Mastodon:
- You can see and visit links if you don't have an account.
- Below I present either a screenshot or an embed version of every Mastodon post I have. I don't embed long posts.
- Join Mastodon here.
Posts - Compilations, Distros, Free Software
My biggest post in Mastodon today is List of Distros. I didn't think it would receive such great participation, discussions, and shares. I suspect it attracted many attentions not only because the mentions, but also the picture I took from TryLinuxToday. You are right, I was writing User Friendly Resources at the time I tooted this.
To be honest, finding old posts is difficult. But fortunately I can make a list of posts like this one My Mastodon Posts June 2020. This toot links to my other toots around this month let's say about Graphic Design, Distros at Mastodon, etc. Unexpectedly, it got a lot of discussion afterwards. Thanks to this list, I got so many new friends and further discussions in the linked toots. See for example, Libre Speed Test, it got many reshares afterwards.
Polls - Graphic Design, Feature Wishes
This is my first poll in Mastodon What graphics free software you use the most?. It is about free software for graphics. Actually I just wanted to use logo of Inkscape, GIMP, and other graphics tools which are available as emoticons in Mastodon (a feature missing on Twitter), but it turned out to be more fun. The result is GIMP became the most used graphics tool among three hundreds of Mastodon friends. This attracted hundreds of participants, dozens of reshares, and got so many discussions. Oh, yeah, this is also the first poll I ever had in my life.
This is my second poll in Mastodon What new feature do you wish on Mastodon?. When writing this, it is still running one day left and most recent result shows that seeing timeline without non-original toots is the most wanted feature among 70+ friends participated.
Hashtags - #FreeSW #GNU #Privacy
Apparently, up to this month my mostly used tags are #FreeSW. If you visit my profile, you will find four of them. Click one tag and you find all my posts with that tag. Click other tag and find other posts. If you logged in, searching for #FreeSW will result in posts by everyone -not only me- in that topic. That's it!
Ubuntu Phone
Ubuntu Phone is now dream comes true!
Do you remember Ubuntu Phone? It was an excellent concept by Canonical which unfortunately failed and discontinued. However, thanks to Mastodon people, I know that it fortunately comes true under @PINE64 and @UBports collaboration! People already preordered Ubuntu Phones and even unboxed them. For there are so many scattered news and photos and videos about it on Mastodon, I just made a compilation post like above one titled List of Ubuntu Phone News Around.
Lists - Apparently Awesome Feature!
This discussion started under Feature Wishes as I asked openly Have you tried "Lists" feature in Mastodon? and it grew even into making of a short tutorial video. With this feature, you can create a stream of information for sources you decide and you can add multiple sources in one list. For example, my list named @UbuntuTouch streams me news from people around PINE64, UBports, and Ubuntu Phone.
Generous Admin
Do you know that Mastodon supports custom emojis? For example, in FLOSS.social instance when I belong, of course there are emojis of various FLOSS products including Ubuntu and Emacs if you wonder. When I type :inkscape: :blender: :gimp: they will be real icons once tooted. I just asked my instance admin sir Michael Downey to add them and he instantly added them for me (and in turn for everyone else, of course). This is the experience one cannot have at Twitter. Although I never used emojis, I don't mind to use FLOSS emojis like these ones for they are already useful.
Some Bonuses
Outside of computing, of course there are many people at Mastodon share normal daily life stuffs and among them I found interesting toots. For example, I found building miniatures and folded staircase arts. I believe anyone would also be interested to these two arts. So far, I am satisfied with Mastodon and I made so many friends I never made with other social networks. Congratulations to Mastodon makers!
What's next?
This is my first article to portray Mastodon's goodness from my own experiences. Next time, I certainly want to see friends and dear readers to make similar reviews. For myself, I don't know what will coming next time but I am positive things like @Purism Librem and @elementary OS would be nice. That's all. Let's share once again!
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.