Fediverse instances on weird hardware, networks and operating systems
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Big centralized social networks run on big iron. Those have cool aspects and can be challenging to maintain, but ultimately I find them boring: you just throw a lot of VC money at the problem, and then it ‘works’.
On the fediverse, people run instances of the software in the most ridiculous possible configurations, just for fun. On a more serious note, I think this makes it a better network: if the software can run on a wide variety of hardware, operating systems and network configurations, the quality of the software improves and it makes it harder to disrupt the network as a whole. Who has a zero day that runs on SCO UNIX, Windows CE and Plan 9? :-)
Note: I am using Wayback Machine links so that memes can just go offline without my blog breaking (The Internet Archive can of course go offline as well, but I think they are slightly more stable than individual fedi instances). They might be still up when you read this, though!
Hardware
- @doskel@doskel.net: a GoToSocial instance on their car, see here
- @weirdthreething@donotsta.re: snac on a LTE modem: https://lte.chromebooks.lol
- @weirdthreething@donotsta.re: snac on a Wii: https://wii.chromebooks.lol
- @artemist@mildlyfunctional.gay: snac on a Wii U: https://wiiu.artem.ist/ now offline, some cache: https://ap.samueldr.com/users/$AqmfvLcFPGflEUHuka
- In 2020, someone ran a Pleroma instance on an Elbrus CPU. They stated the instance was running in a
screensession because the OS had no systemd, so I suspect it did lived shortly. As of 2025, the subdomain no longer resolves, but the post is still cached on Mastodon.social! You can view it here if you have an account on that instance.
Networks
- @domi@donotsta.re started an instance on an .ip6.arpa domain here
- @dam@lethallava.land started an instance on an e164.arpa domain here
- @kfh@chaos.social: a Mastodon instance on an in-addr.arpa domain here
- @alyx@frogs.lgbt: runs ipv6.camp, an IPv6-only Mastodon instance. If you don’t have IPv6 yourself, you could view their posts through a dual stack instance.
- Unfortunately the fedi server on Discord is down as we speak, but I could make a screenshot from my home instance:
Operating systems
Surprisingly few interesting things that I could find! Please, port more software to operating systems that are not Linux or BSD*! Haiku, OpenVMS, Plan 9, MS-DOS, you name it! :D
*okay if you port snac to 4.3 BSD running on a DEC VAX you get featured here
Inspiration
- Microsat (someone has access to a uni lab?)
- snac on a Linux GPON SFP
- snac on an HP IPAQ
- snac on a SPARCStation
- new fedi server for Plan 9 from Bell Labs, I could not find one yet
- new fedi server for ESP32
- something on hardware by SiliconGraphics
- fedi over dn42 (according to @famfo this was actually done on social.dn42, could not find any other reference)
This article mostly focuses on servers, though there are some interesting clients as well: DOStodon for DOS, though its system requirements are kind of ridiculous for machines of that era since it is implemented in JavaScript. See here.
Please, give me more links to different instances, I want to make this list as complete as possible! See my homepage for my contact info.