piefed.social is a very popular instance, and I feel it’s really beginner friendly, why isn’t it an option on Voyager?
PieFed and Lemmy are different software platforms for interacting with the Fediverse (of which they are both separate parts). It’s a bit like how Spotify and Tidal are both for streaming music, and you can see the same artists on both, but you can’t use Spotify’s app to sign in to Tidal. PieFed’s API is fairly similar to Lemmy’s, for the routes that it covers, but not exactly the same, so you can’t use Lemmy apps with PieFed, or PieFed apps with Lemmy.
(edit, just 'cos LW is being a bit slow.)
Yes. PieFed federates with Lemmy, but in much the same way that it federates with MBIN, or PeerTube, or NodeBB. Federation is about the relationship between servers, using a common protocol (ActivityPub) to communicate. A mobile app like voyager is concerned about the relationship between a client and server, who communicate using something they’ve both agreed on (Lemmy’s V3 API in this case). PieFed can’t implement Lemmy’s V3 API (for a whole bunch of reasons), so mobile apps have to use PieFed’s own API to communicate with it (which is what I’m doing right now, as I write this comment).
I see, thanks for the explanation.
I take it there’s not an app that just shows the full fediverse?
I believe because it’s not just a different instance, it has a different backend to lemmy (voyager is a lemmy app).
Same reason why you can’t login to a Mbin instance on voyager. Only lemmy instances work with voyager.
Edit: I’m so bad at explaining but maybe this analogy helps: think of the difference between piefed and lemmy the same as mastodon and lemmy: the content is connected but they are different kinds of software.
I think piefed doesnt have an app yet, and it came relatively late to the fediverse as an alternative to lemmy, but I have high hopes they will finish an app soon!
I know it’s a bit of a bummer to be an early adopter of stuff at times, but the bright side is that it’s all exciting. I like the fediverse more and more every time I notice an update.
It’s been 1,5 years since I joined and holy moly was it cool to switch from webapp (jerboa app was there, but it was just not for me) to voyager when it was released.
Can’t you sign into any instance on Voyager if you know the name?
