YSK that a lot of common questions/complaints about Lemmy are presently answered by kbin

This is not an attempt to convert Lemmy users, nor is it a slight on Lemmy. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why Lemmy works better for some, and I love the fact that we not only have multiple choices, but multiple choices that allow us to interact with each other regardless! It's amazing. Lemmy is great, no shade.

With that said...

Why YSK: I see a lot of users posting frequent questions about Lemmy that are currently answered by kbin.

For example:

  • The ability to block a whole domain, or subscribe to one
  • The ability to subscribe to individual users
  • A built-in search tool to find communities all over fedi (kbin, Lemmy, Mastodon groups, etc.) with an indication of how active they are
  • Mitigation for the "tracking pixel" issue

I find that almost every day, I see Lemmy users asking about features and I think, "well, kbin does that." I think it would be worthwhile for more users to check into both platforms and decide which might be best for them.

indigojasper,
indigojasper avatar

me on kbin not knowing lemmy didn't have these things... damn lol

Chetzemoka,
Chetzemoka avatar

Same, every time I see those posts thinking, "Kbin does that."

Ernest is kinda the best, gotta say. Everyone should buy him a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kbin

melroy,
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Don't forget the whole team behind kbin, who are all volunteers.. ;) See: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/activity

Chetzemoka,
Chetzemoka avatar

Thanks for this! I'm new here and still learning how it all works. This is great to know

melroy,
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org avatar

No problem :) https://www.buymeacoffee.com/melroy 😊

Chetzemoka,
Chetzemoka avatar

Nice! Thanks for the link!

melroy,
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Thank you for the coffee!

Senex,

Kbin was where I first signed up but they didn’t have an app (yet). I’m only on Lemmy because I can use it on my phone. I kinda like Kbin better.

Chetzemoka,
Chetzemoka avatar

I just use the kbin mobile web app and it's fine for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Senex,

Unfortunately I have an old phone that doesn’t support web apps. Kinda sucks but I’m too cheap to buy a newer one. Haha!

stevecrox,
stevecrox avatar

Its a responsive designed website, why do you need an Application?

thanevim,

It's certainly nice to have an app, but I've been happy with staying on kbin by having it permanently sit in a Firefox tab on my phone. Functions just fine for my purposes like that.

MisterFeeny,

If you want something that resembles an app, you can even make a shortcut in firefox and put it on your home screen so you can have a dedicated kbin button rather than setting aside a firefox tab. Works great.

xapr,

What I’ve been curious about is the relative performance of kbin (PHP) vs. lemmy (Rust) server code. Rust is supposed to be many times more efficient performance-wise than PHP as far as I know, but has anyone compared this in practice? The presumed ease and speed of adding features to kbin because of PHP may come at a high performance cost (read: carbon emissions too). Does anyone have any further insight into this?

601error,
@601error@lemmy.ca avatar

Probably something you’d notice more in the number of concurrent users each solution could handle per web server instance. Rust theoretically would let you serve more users with less resources.

Disclosure: I dislike PHP.

xapr,

Right, essentially this is what I was thinking - more vs. less users per CPU core.

MoshMcCabe,

PHP is fine as long as you don't try to do too much with it. For simple GET/POST requests I wouldn't be surprised if there's not much difference performance wise. If you start trying to do any complex processing or data aggregation in PHP (which should probably be done on the database side with queries anyway) then the performance will really fall off a cliff. Especially because PHP is (for web) single threaded. Threading is possible but it'll cause far more headaches than it's worth. Best to keep it simple and use a more appropriate tool if more complex processing is needed.

xapr,

Thanks for the insights!

Fedizen,

Do they have an API yet?

ADHDefy,
ADHDefy avatar

From what I hear, it's being tested/reviewed currently, but it's basically ready and will be available soon.

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA,
@HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world avatar

Kbin how does Lemmy taste

forrcaho,

I have accounts on both, and I like the look of kbin better, so I’ve tried to use it more. However, the functionality you mention has been undiscoverable to me: I have no idea how to get a list of non-local magazines, and I’ve looked around for that quite a bit. On lemmy, it’s as easy as clicking “All” when searching communities.

Is there any document that would help me find those features on kbin? Or, for that matter, a similar sort of documentation for lemmy?

atocci,
atocci avatar

In the magazine tab on Kbin, it functions similarly to Lemmy. You can search for a community/magazine there, local or federated. If something doesn't show up because it's not federated yet, you can use the @ tag with the @ domain name. You can also use it as a list of all communities currently federating with your kbin instance by not typing anything into the search bar, selecting "local and federated" in the dropdown, and clicking search.

Jase,

deleted_by_author

    •
    TheKingBee,
    @TheKingBee@lemmy.world avatar

    You can’t black instances though, instead of blocking 100 communities you can just block one instance…

    Hazzia,

    Definitely a good alternative to defederation. After all, what are the chances you’ll find an instance that has the exact same values/tollerance level you do? Even if you do, it takes time for admins to become aware of, investigate, and defederate problem instances, during which you could theoretically block them yourself.

    Knightfall,
    @Knightfall@lemmy.ca avatar

    I saw in the comments here there are no apps yet for Kbin. So are Kbin users just using the website on their devices for now?

    I’m enjoying Connect for Lemmy and awaiting Sync for Lemmy to be released. Can or will those work for me if I made a Kbin account and will I gain these Kbin perks you speak of?

    ADHDefy,
    ADHDefy avatar

    kbin is newer, and there are apps on the way. Artemis should be available soon, and I know there are at least one or two more being worked on. But yeah, none available rn so people are using the PWA.

    utnapishtim,

    Can someone tell me why the back button doesn’t work in Kbin and why my phone starts to heat like there is not tomorrow?

    atocci,
    atocci avatar

    The back button doesn't work?

    utnapishtim,

    Yes, if I click on a post on my phone and I want to go back the android back button doesn’t work.

    ADHDefy,
    ADHDefy avatar

    Sounds like a bug in your browser, or maybe the Android system.

    utnapishtim,

    I can’t wait for an app for Kbin.

    atocci,
    atocci avatar

    What browser are you using? I haven't experienced this one myself on either Firefox or Edge.

    jimmy90,

    I think these are all features that are being worked on, along with better administration and moderation tools. The Lemmy devs are very busy 😀

    NicoCharrua,
    @NicoCharrua@lemmy.ca avatar

    What do you mean by the built in search tool to find communities all over Fedi? From what I can tell the search bar only searches communities that are already federated with kbin, so you’d still need to use something like lemmyverse.net/communities for small communities anyways.

    And also if you want to have access to a community that hasn’t been federated already, I think you need to use a different search bar. On Lemmy you can use the same for both.

    For me Lemmy is better. The web UI is simpler and easier to understand for me, and I have no use for the microblogging features. And more importantly there are Lemmy apps but no kbin ones. I’m glad there are options for everyone, and hopefully they both get the features that they’re missing but the other has!

    Hobovision,
    Hobovision avatar

    Yeah the current challenge with searching is if no one has subscribed to a magazine or user on another instance, you have to search the exact name@domain to get it to show up. Ideally Kbin instances would implement a user bot that subscribes to all the users and communities it can scrape from all federated instances until this search limitation is fixed.

    Hazzia,

    Petition to name subscriber bot “Tom”

    Boozilla,
    @Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

    Are there any mobile apps for kbin?

    Brochetudo,

    Not that I’m aware of. Better put, not any high quality ones that I’m aware of

    T156,

    No, Kbin hasn’t released their own, or an API yet. I believe the developer is working to stop it crashing after the recent migrations, so has been mostly focused on that instead of the app.

    rideranton,
    rideranton avatar

    I've been working on the API, and it is pretty much feature complete (barring feedback) and should be entering review very soon.

    atocci,
    atocci avatar

    Amazing, thank you!

    fraydabson,

    When I first started doing fediverse stuff I used kbin. The best mobile layout was to use mobile browsers with extension to enable “kbin enhancement script” which made the web interface much better.

    Still not great though as voyager and memmy are the reasons I stopped using kbin

    Arcturus,
    Arcturus avatar

    There is an app on Testflight and Play Store at the moment.

    But you won't be able to login yet, besides the test Kbin api server.

    Sims,

    Not sure what the diff is, or what openness they have, which came first, why the next one was developed etc

    Chickenstalker,

    Begin, the Fediverse Wars has.

    xavier666,

    You were supposed to bring balance to the Fediverse! Not leave it in darkness.

    crazy4ski,

    Spot on

    teydam,

    I've been using kbin mostly on my computer, and its interesting to see the lemmy.world feeds pop in. still learning all the function of kbin. on my phone I just use wefwef.app as there seems to be a lot more of the low brow content I am looking for when pooping like funny memes.

    soloner,

    Does wefwef (voyager) support kbin? It sounds like that’s what you are implying, just want to make sure I’m not misunderstanding.

    If so, I may make a kbin account and see how that works. Mostly I am looking for a familiar “post/subscribe into categorical communities” solution with no extra fluff. That’s why I like Lemmy, but I haven’t looked into kbin at all, in truth.

    fidodo,

    Are those features client or protocol specific? My Lemmy client, connect, let’s me block instances and has search for posts, communities, users, comments, etc.

    Black_Gulaman,
    @Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    yes connect has all of these features. It’s my main app on mobile and wefwef for pc (i refuse to call it voyager, because it’s a generic name)

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