What are your Lemmy/Fediverse tips and tricks for those who are just joining or thinking of joining?

This probably won't work for everyone, but whenever I'm learning or trying out something new and unfamiliar, I always tend to follow the philosophy of "Just jump straight into the deep end and you have no choice but to swim".

So for those thinking of trying out Lemmy/Fediverse. I suggest trying to get your own instance running. It'll get you more familiar with what Lemmy is and how it works (at least on a high level). Its also really rewarding when you get it all up and running, it becomes something more personal to you since you took the time and effort (instead of just clicking sign up on some instance).

But again, that just how I prefer doing things. To each their own.

I Wonder if a raspberry pi would work for this.
Do we need like special hardware for it or can I use my PC or what do I need lol
- You don't need any special hardware. I have my instance running on 1 CPU and 2GB of RAM just fine (granted, its just me there so there isn't really any massive load).
  
  So yes, you can use your PC if you want. The only thing I'd say is that if you plan to have your instance federated (i.e. make posts from it, message people etc), you'd want to have it running all the time. Otherwise, if your PC is down and Lemmy isn't running, your images and posts might not show up properly for people on other instances.
  
  Which is why most people prefer to rent a server or VPS (virtual private server, which is usually cheaper). Since you can have the server running 24/7.
  
  Other than that, you need a domain name. Again there are websites that can give you free domain names. But in my case I prefer to just buy a domain.
  
  If you check out https://join-lemmy.org/, there's "Run a Server" option which goes over the steps.
I’m also running my own instance (via DigitalOcean). Looks like it’ll cost me something like $5 per month. More than happy to be paying a nominal fee like that for having no admins control my experience

FYI to anyone finding this, the Ansible deployment was genuinely very simple to get running. I spent a day frustrated with Docker and then tried Ansible and it did everything seamlessly: installed lemmy, postgresql, and let’s encrypt
- Yeah it costs me about the same for my instance, I'm using https://1984.hosting/. I actually didn't use the Ansible script for my setup, I just configured it myself with Docker. It was a little more involved, but I think I have a decent grasp of how it all fits together having configured it myself.

wefwef.app is a great alternative for those who are used to Apollo.

I saw someone mention Jerboa for those used to RIF, and after a couple hours of light use, I gotta say it is indeed pretty similar so far.
- As someone who came from RIF I couldn't stand Jerboa. It was just too unintuitive. I'm currently using Connect for Lemmy, but honestly I'm just waiting and hoping Sync for Lemmy is going to fill the void that RIF left. Sync for Reddit probably would've been my go to app if I hadn't discovered RIF before.
Is wefwef iOS only?
- Works on any mobile browser but it looks and behaves like an IOS app. It's ok but takes getting used to when you are used to Android.

I use this userscript with Tampermonkey for a layout that's closer to old.reddit. (Script not mine.)

Once you understand that federation is a process managed by each instance it is easier to navigate communities

Your account is on an instance (server) that will only see communities on other instances if someone on your instance has already subscribed to that community

If you joined a large instance you might already see a lot of communities in your feed that you can subscribe to, but you might be missing some that exist but won't show up in the search

A solution is to use lemmyverse.net or a similar site. You set your home instance, then search for communities. It gives you links that open on your instance where you can subscribe to (or block) communities. You do this in a browser, and it immediately reflects in the apps

e: If you are coming from reddit and just want to know what communities align with a particular subreddit, you can use sub.rehab then search for the community on lemmyverse

Don't join the biggest instance.

Lurk on all, local and subscribed until you get to know the difference!