I made my first Fediverse accounts in October 2020, joining the main instances of Pixelfed (pixelfed.social) and Mastodon (mastodon.social). I very much like Pixelfed Social, but I never felt that Mastodon Social was a great fit for my posts.
I had been thinking of moving from Mastodon Social for a while. Setting up my own Mastodon server does not make sense for my use-cases. But what server could I join? A suggestion came from an episode of Brodie Robertson's Tech Over Tea. He suggested that refugees from the now-defunct Distro Tube Mastodon instance take a look at Linux Rocks because it is laid back and lets people post about what they are interested in.
I took a look at Linux Rocks and liked what I saw. It is clear that the only requirement is that you use Linux or a similar alternative operating system. I run Linux on all of my computers (Manjaro, EndeavourOS, Bodhi Linux, and GNU Trisquel). I submitted my application. Within a day I was approved.
Thus far I am enjoying the instance. I carried over most of my subscribers from Mastodon Social. On Linux Rocks, I already found some new interesting people to follow and the local timeline is readable, unlike Mastodon Social. A few of my early Linux Rocks posts have received some more engagement than what I saw on Mastodon Social.
One concern that I had was regarding my own site's SEO. My Mastodon Social profile was a decent external link for The New Leaf Journal because of the domain rating of the overall instance and my page having a decent (by our standards) score in its own right. Fortunately, my Mastodon Social profile still exists in a dormant state - so I keep the external link benefits that I accrued from it while building my new profile.
It took more than two years - but I finally tested one of the key benefits of the Fediverse: Being able to pack up your profile and bring it to a new home.
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