Get 100$ credit for your own Linux and gaming server: https://www.linode.com/linuxexperiment Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux:https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en# ? SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp ? GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/ ?️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com ? FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nick_thelinuxexp/ I'm also on ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@TheLinuxExperiment:e And on PEERTUBE: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license. #mastodon #fediverse #socialmedia 00:00 Intro 00:31 Sponsor: 100$ free credit on your Linux or Gaming server 01:31 What is Mastodon, really? 03:07 How to create a Mastodon account? 05:45 How to access Mastodon 07:07 How to use Mastodon 10:11 How to interact with people 12:48 Learn Mastodon Etiquette 14:24 Find people to follow 15:55 The Fediverse 16:35 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly 17:34 Support the channel Mastodon is a platform comparable to Twitter, but open source, and made of plenty of servers, that talk to each other to form a single social network So, how do you join? Well the first step is to pick a server. You have a handy short list on joinmastodon.com/servers. Let's look at the interface. The first thing is your profile. To edit and complete it, just tap your user photo, and click the edit button. You can also add links to your various other socials, and you'll notice that's where you can be verified. This implies having your own website: you copy a link to your mastodon profile into the code of your website, and you add the link to your website in your mastodon profile, and it will show up in green with a checkmark. By default, your timeline, in the "home" tab on the mobile app will show posts from everyone you follow. The "search tab" lets you look for people to follow. Then you have your post button, the black button at the bottom. Finally, you get your notifications tab. n mastodon, you have 3 timelines: your home, where you'll only see posts from people or hashtags that you follow, you have the local timeline, which is your community, all the people on YOUR specific server, and you have the federated timeline, which is a giant dump of everything that everyone has posted everywhere. I never use the latter, personally, but you might have a use for it. When looking at what someone has posted, you have a few options. You can reply, you can boost, which is exactly like a retweet on Twitter: you're posting to your followers the message you're boosting, as is, without any commentary. Then you can "favorite" a post, which is that little star button. Now, if you want to write a post, then you just hit the "post button" on the mobile app, or you start writing on the left column on the desktop. Posts have a character limit, that your server sets. By default, it's 500, but it can be more or less. You can add hashtags like on Twitter, by just typing the hashtag symbol, and you can mention people by typing the @ symbol. Of course, you can embed images, you can also add polls with up to 4 options, and you can add content warnings. These are basically a filter that will hide the content of your post behind blur and some text. People will only see the text you wrote in the content warning, and if they want to see the actual post, they can click on it. Finally, you can also pick who will see your post, either only the people you mention, which is the only way to make a direct message on mastodon, all your followers, or everyone. You can edit your posts. When writing posts, if you add an image, use the description, and fill it in. Second, use content warnings liberally. Third, use the "sensitive content" filter for images liberally as well. If you had a Twitter account, use Movetodon: you login with your twitter account, then your mastodon account, and it will look at your Twitter follows, find the ones that are on mastodon, and offer you to follow them individually, or follow them all in one click. You can also use the local timeline, using the "local" tab on the web, or in the Search, then Community tab on the mobile app. Next is using hashtags: you can follow hashtags on mastodon. Click on the hashtag, and then on the follow button. Fediverse Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5npl2KCt2ok ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ypCRB_3Q_k

The first 500 people who click the link will get 2 free months of Skillshare Premium: https://skl.sh/thelinuxexperiment3 After a series of videos on how to switch from Google, it’s high time that we take a look at how well this “de-googling” thing has been going. Some of the projects I recommended no longer exist, and some didn’t quite fulfill my needs... Support the channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP My Gaming on Linux Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaw_Lz7oifDb-PZCAcZ07kw Follow me on LBRY: https://lbry.tv/@TheLinuxExperiment:e The Linux Experiment merch: get your goodies there! https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/the-linux-experiment Ok, so, first of all, the search engine. There are plenty of alternatives that don’t rely on Google at all, and my favorite is Duck Duck Go. I’ve been using it on all my devices: laptop, desktop, smartphone, tablet… It’s fast, it has nice features, it’s super customizable, and it’s entirely independent of Google results. The “bang” features that let you use DDG as a proxy for other web searches, like wikipedia, is also super handy. But the search results themselves… They sometimes lack precision. As long as I look for something fairly well know, a common search with plenty of available results, it’s fantastic. But if I decide to search in french, my native language, then it starts to fall apart. Results are less precise, less complete than what you can find on Google, and very niche topics are barely covered. I’d say DDG works 90% of the time, but for the otherr 10%, i’ve been coming back to Google, using the !g shortcut in DDG. I really hope DDG can improve its algorithm and crawler bot to make sure that I need to rely less and less on Google, but I’m not there yet. As per email, I had moved to Zoho for a bit, after my “‘switch from gmail” video. Zoho is nice, it’s super feature complete, but to be honest, it’s also a bit slow to load, and too complete for my needs. I ended up sticking with Outlook.com, which is good, but not great. I’m currently looking into Proton mail which looks fantastic, and since they added a calendar now, it should cover all my needs. My channels use their Gmail account still, though. You have to have a Google account for your youtube channel, obviously, and I haven’t found a way to move that email address to something else, apart from redirecting all mail from Gmail to another adress, which wouldn’t solve the issue of Google being able to read and parse said emails. I used to rely on Google Photos, and played with Canon’s irista service for a while, but they ended up shutting it down, so I had to find another solution. What I’m using no ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vioXFqvE89k