Mastodon On PowerPC

[Dronecatcher]

A couple of months ago, on a low end social media kick I set out to try and setup Mastodon on PowerPC but was scuppered as usual by TLS/security issues.

For a while, the Pinafore frontend - designed to be ultra low-resource - worked (but incredibly slowly and crashed often) in InterWebPPC/TFF only but eventually stopped functioning.

Fast forward a few months and after a management shift at Twitter being billed as an Extinction Level Event, a whole surge of refugees seeking a Twitter-like experience elsewhere have put a greater focus on Mastodon.

Enter Brutaldon - a highly effective and genuinely low resource front end with lots of CPU saving options and works for InterWebPPC/TFF and Leopard Webkit - here I have an InTheBox instance running it.

 

[TheShortTimer]

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I knew that there was still further hackery to come from you.

 

[Amethyst1]

[...] I value the importance of choice so that people can explore alternatives and decide as to what suits them best [...]

TOOT to that.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I knew that there was still further hackery to come from you.

Thanks Well, just keeping my ear to the ground - it's the developer(s) behind Brutaldon who makes this possible!

 

[DinoSloar]

https://github.com/smallsco/macstodon

Classic Mac Mastadon client. Seen there is also a dos version. Active retro linked to them from setting up a cloud mastadon server in his latest video.

 

[Dronecatcher]

https://github.com/smallsco/macstodon

Classic Mac Mastadon client. Seen there is also a dos version. Active retro linked to them from setting up a cloud mastadon server in his latest video.

Alas, not written for PPC and also requires a proxy server to be set up - cool though.

 

[algarcia]

A couple of months ago, on a low end social media kick I set out to try and setup Mastodon on PowerPC but was scuppered as usual by TLS/security issues.

For a while, the Pinafore frontend - designed to be ultra low-resource - worked (but incredibly slowly and crashed often) in InterWebPPC/TFF only but eventually stopped functioning.

Fast forward a few months and after a management shift at Twitter being billed as an Extinction Level Event, a whole surge of refugees seeking a Twitter-like experience elsewhere have put a greater focus on Mastodon.

Enter Brutaldon - a highly effective and genuinely low resource front end with lots of CPU saving options and works for InterWebPPC/TFF and Leopard Webkit - here I have an InTheBox instance running it.



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Got here just to see if there was a native PPC mastodon client, this should do for now.

What's that viewmaster reel app?

 

[mectojic]

Not to burst your bubble, but didn't Action Retro literally make a video about PPC Mastodon a few days ago?

I guess it's just a coincidence?

 

[Dronecatcher]

What's that viewmaster reel app?

It's an Applet I made many moons ago to open videos in Mplayer:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mplayer-script-for-struggling-macs.1836256/

 

[Dronecatcher]

I guess it's just a coincidence?

Not at all - he's launched his own Mastodon server - he didn't show any means to connect on a PowerPC though.

 

[AphoticD]

But cool, Mastodon looks like good tech, and great to see something working on PowerPC - thanks for reporting @Dronecatcher - can you recommend any techy Mastodon networks worth checking out?

 

[wicknix]

There is a Mastodon plug-in available for bitlbee. Maybe i'll build it for my tiger/leopard bitlbee package at some point if there is enough interest. I won't use it however, so it may not happen. I also deleted all my various social media accounts 3 years ago, and i don't miss any of the vomit spewed on them at all. Family and friends have my cell number and we call or text like people use to do back in the day. I have no need for facebarf, ****ter, instacrap, etc, as i really don't care to see what somebody had for lunch, or hear about how much they dislike the orange man, etc. I'm quite content with IRC (and discord for it's irc-like experience) and some select forums for my daily dose of social networking.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Attempting to return your thread back on topic... This program seeing as its PPC code could also run an Intel Mac under Snow Leopard, right?

Maybe with the normal Rosetta CPU penalty - but on Snow Leopard you could use Intel TFF and a Foxbox or simply whatever browser is optimal - the 'boxing' is only a strategy really needed on PowerPC.

 

[Dronecatcher]

can you recommend any techy Mastodon networks worth checking out?

I've not done much exploring yet - the network I chose is sdf.org who have a huge old school computing/network presence.

 

[AphoticD]

Maybe MR admins could be convinced to host a Mastodon server, to run a SM network aligned with our favourite techy distractions

 

[Dronecatcher]

Maybe MR admins could be convinced to host a Mastodon server, to run a SM network aligned with our favourite techy distractions

Well, there is the Action Retro one but I can't vouch for it's content.

 

[Weaselboy]

Moderator Note:

Quite a few political and off-topic comments regarding Twitter and Elon Musk were removed. Please stick to the thread topic of Mastodon On PowerPC.

 

[DinoSloar]

Seems like as long as we have web browsers still capable of fairly new standards we will have access to the web interface for these platforms. Once there is no longer a current web browser then a native client will be the only option.