Start Mastodon
Here's how to quickly start your social networking life with Mastodon:
- Go to joinmastodon.org
- Click Get Started
- Select General
- Select an instance among choices
- Create new account
- Enter Mastodon
Teaching Computer using Free Software
Here's how to quickly start your social networking life with Mastodon:
Here's resources that cover Software Freedom and Secure Privacy recommendations which people often refer to as references. I also had similar list I named it Alternative World Resources you can find on the internet.
You can contact me via email to malsasa [at] mailo [dot] com.
Continuing Why Quit GitHub, there is a solution that is easier for everyone including GitHub users, that is to teach new programmers using ethical repository other than it. The result wished is that new generation of programmers are free from problems GitHub possesses.
There are choices for you to educate new programmers: 1) Codeberg 2) Pagure 3) GitLab
Because GitHub although popular is in fact owned by the anti-freedom anti-privacy company Microsoft and running proprietary software inside your web browser.
For you who are ready to switch from GitHub, here's ethical recommendations. They are alternatives that runs completely free software inside your web browser and is not controlled by Microsoft-like company you can register gratis: 1) Savannah 2) Codeberg 3) Sourcehut 4) GitLab 5) Notabug
For you who are ready to do a research, here's recommendations from various people in our Free Software Community to consider (1) The GNU Project Ethical Repository Criteria (2) Switching Software Recommendation (3) Reverse Eagle Recommendation and (4) P2P Foundation Recommendation.
There is Security Awareness an authorship that tried to make people aware about security in computing. There should be Free Software Awareness an authorship to make people aware about control in their own computing. Here's list of best examples of what, why and how Free Software is important to our computing.
For internet user who wants to know the reasoning to quit Facebook social network, here is a list of good quality resources. Help, recommendations and references are included excellently.
1) Why you should delete facebook (Free Software Foundation) 2) What is at stake if you keep facebook? (Degooglify Movement) 3) Reminders why you left facebook (#DeleteFacebook Movement) 4) It's time to leave Gafam (La Quadrature Du Net) 5) Global surveillance 2013 (Wikipedia)
Mastodon, Mastodon, Mastodon, what is Mastodon anyway? It is a social network, but unlike Facebook and likes, it's social against other social networks. For me seeking free software and privacy respecting social network which is huge, Mastodon is a match. Let me share my experience with you.
I love to find people who are supportive to software freedom. People call them with many names, Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) community is among the name. First, I found Mastodon instance that is straightforward to what I am looking for, it is named FLOSS.social. This becomes my identity as my Mastodon handle is ademalsasa@floss.social. Second, I can be friend with people I already knew on other places, such as KDE and Ubuntu, and the users, and the developers. So easily I can follow people I in my own field want to know about. Third, I can speak freely to them and they even replied and retoot me. You know, even the Mastodon owner (read: my instance admin) replied to me and Mastodon creator (@Chocobozz) and Framasoft themselves (@Framasoft) retoot me as well. These are what I am looking for up to today which I cannot find even with Reddit. To achieve all this, I do not need to sacrifice my freedom (facebook) nor deny federation (twitter) as I got them all with this free software free society social network, Mastodon. I believe if you love FLOSS you will love to join Mastodon. I am satisfied I found my community.
Hashtags are closer to my own field! I can find trending keywords like #ubuntu, #foss, #linux, even #gnu within Mastodon I hardly find on Twitter. This adds the feelings at home here.
Mastodon has superb sharing features. In Twitter it is called tweet, here it is called toot. It is good to see 500 characters per toot, public/private choice, and followers only visibility. The ultimate thing is, by one toot your message reaches multiple different social networks.
Resharing in Twitter is to retweet – retweeted – retweeting, in Mastodon it is to boost – boosted – boosting. Personally, I do boost far more often here than in Twitter or even Reddit. Perhaps it's because Mastodon is still young I got the feelings that “nobody knows me” different to when I use Facebook or Twitter and I enjoy that a lot.
As example I display here some of my precious Mastodon toots. I have five toots which got nice reactions from Mastodon users.
(Code Hostings) (Writer Guide) (PeerTube Guide) (Help Quit GitHub) (BigBlueButton Guide)
Our free software community is fun. Even seeing the domain names is already amusing. You see, my instance is FLOSS.social, and there is another instance named FOSStodon.org, and FOSSdaily.xyz, and everything else. I have fun seeing people care a lot about free software that I care about.
It is the federation. Federation is internet, it takes back control to the hand of internet users once again. Unlike Facebook alikes, my new social network is social as I said, it is integrated to other social networks. If you have little computing knowledge, you will know every visitable item in internet is hosted on an individual computer machine called server. Now, Facebook server is not conneted to Twitter server, but Mastodon servers are interconnected with each other, and Mastodon is connected to PeerTube, Pixelfed, and other amazing social networks. For example, in Mastodon I speak freely with Dr. Roy of Techrights.org although he is actually not using Mastodon and this is impossible with Facebook.
I love Free Software. You will love Free Software too as soon as you discover it. No matter whether you are developer or user, you love complete control over your software. Go learn about Free Software at https://www.gnu.org —the pioneer of our community.
There are many problems. Internal and external. Within our community. I believe teaching is the way to solve all those problems. If not completely, then mostly, with grade better than any other solution.
If you wish people to switch from Windows to GNU/Linux, teach it. If you wish people to switch from Microsoft to LibreOffice, teach it. If you wish people to switch from Photoshop to GIMP, teach it. If you wish people to switch from Proprietary to Free Software, teach it. If you wish people to value their freedom, teach it. Not just giving them clues but guide them not. Teach starting from the most basics from user's point of view. If you cannot do that at school, create your own.
Teaching involves choosing. Of course a real teacher is brave to choose one among many choices for the sake of his students. He will chose between Signal, Telegram, Riot.im, Session, and Movim and be patient using it consistently with students. Same example goes for other categories such as Trisquel, KDE, Firefox, Amarok, Kate, until Qt. This creates school by time. Nothing different to judo school, karate school, boxing school, every teacher chooses and every student follows and as consequence a school established. That's good. And I believe that's what lacking today and we should do that. Why so hesitate about choosing?
Teaching involves respects. Let people come to you mostly. Not you coming to them. But sometimes, good thing to visit people to give speeches. This makes people value knowledges and person with knowledge. This creates communication as people will know who is the right person to ask. This is important as asking wrong person is bad education resulting in disaster (think about hard disk partitioning done to your drive by dummies).
That's why since 2016 I focused my effort to teach Free Software online via Telegram in Indonesian language for my Indonesia people. I require my students to use free software to communicate (Telegram) and use free software to read my books (LibreOffice) and use free software to submit their assignments to me (LibreOffice too). The media I use to reach them is free software (WordPress). I give courses about software freedom basics, Free Software Definition, intro to GNU/Linux and LibreOffice, how to migrate from Windows to GNU/Linux, selling Free Software is okay, and eighty more other topics. I hold courses every month. I can confirm today I got more than 1000 students since then. I have so many talks with a lot of students either in public or private from Aceh to Papua. Do you know the result? I find my students learned to value software freedom and some of them now using Trisquel (a point Indonesia community never reach before, I witness), many of them motivated to stick with free software exclusively and tried to reach that point, all of them now using LibreOffice for sure, and they know in Teknoplasma they are forbidden to promote proprietary software as they value it as a problem not a solution. I do this teaching alone. I do these all without money. My limitations are bad internet access and bad (broken) computer. To my understanding, of course I believe this is a success in educating free software to people and I am proud of it. I can, with all my limitations and poorness, so I believe you can and can do it better than me.
My teaching is not without flaws, of course, unfortunately. I wish those flaws gone forever soon. That is, among few others, I still announce my courses on facebook, a proprietary software social network everybody knows its badness, because most Indonesians I am looking are there. That is my difficulty. I made account there long before I know software freedom (www.gnu.org) and up to today I am using what I have and I use that well. I myself dislike it I use it with disgust but I bear it for my people. I wish someday I can delete my facebook after people delete theirs so I can focus to my Telegram when all people are there. Up to today, I am satisfied with Telegram crowd of Indonesians and you may believe they are so supportive and curious I love them.
“Do not use Telegram, use Signal instead!” some people will challenge my choice with their choice within the scope of free software. That's legitimate. Same goes for other choices of mine such as KDE and Trisquel. To such a people, with respect and best regards, I say, please teach it first. I ask you to proof your choice socially with your students (your society) and bear with it for a long time together. If you can keep teaching Free Software with your choice together with students, that's good, I respect that. If you cannot, that's also good as long as it's still free software, but that will confuse your students and your society, and they will hesitate to come to you again. I remind you, teaching is choosing and be patient with it consistently together.
About me and Telegram, I use it since 2014. I made few first Indonesian GNU/Linux communities on Telegram, let's say, BGLI, BLOI, BGRI, and initial member of now big communities such as GimpScape and Ubuntu Indonesia. Honestly, the first of them, BGLI, was created because of me, I didn't have smartphone at that time so us the founders decided to use my recommendation, Telegram, and not WhatsApp which initially chosen, so I can join the group using my laptop instead of my Nokia phone. I recommended Telegram because it is Free Software and ultimately could run on GNU/Linux (at that time WhatsApp could not). And even BGLI was not BGLI at first, but Pemula Ubuntu Surabaya (PUS), and recreated once because of an ill-mannered person, until finally recreated as BGLI. I involved in all those as indeed I want Indonesia to switch from WhatsApp to Telegram. I believe Telegram is good in place of all proprietary media such as WhatsApp. This spirit I don't know emanate from anybody other than me. And as a result, now in Indonesia, everybody uses Telegram. Since 2017, I made my school at Telegram. I think this is enough to describe my connection to Telegram.
Because Write.as is the simplest.
I can write more Blogspot or WordPress blogs if I want. That's easy for me. But I got too much of them perhaps I bored. The concept in Write.as is new to me as it emphasize anonymity and I can quickly write as quick as possible without distractions. More than that, Write.as is a part of Fediverse —in which I am also a member of it in the Mastodon social network— so I have more reasons to choose Write.as. As long as it is Free Software, I will choose it.
I have so many blogs and all talk about Free Software (GNU/Linux included, of course). I listed them on the next paragraph. So why making new blog? Perhaps it is because I am bored with UbuntuBuzz.com (place where I professionally authoring) and want to try something new. I got bored because I want and can write many new articles but I cannot as my hardware is limited and honestly I need a new laptop but I cannot afford to buy one. The thing I speak about is not a usual new, but it is something unique coming from our Free Software Community (a society that cares and fights for software freedom and user's privacy), it is called Write.as, something like WordPress but far more simple and federated by default to the Fediverse. Included in the new thing is I want to make something more personal as all my other blogs are nothing personal. However, I believe nobody will know this new blog of mine and I do not wish it to be popular.
With Write.as, I want to write quickly as quick as possible as I felt my weakness there.
My other blogs are: – malsasa – my main blog, all identity and history of mine are here – restava – my free software adventure journal, I frequently posted here – hardwareubuntu – my link blog about printers & hardware that are compatible to GNU/Linux and how to install their drivers – modemlinux – my link blog about usb modems for GNU/Linux – kursusteknoplasma – my school, I teach Free Software in Indonesia using blog, Telegram, and LibreOffice to my people and up to today I got more than 1000 students – linuxdreambox – my only english blog, I talk about ideas here – ubuntubuzz.com – owned by Mr. Mahmudin Ashar my employer, I wrote 1000 article about GNU/Linux here and still writing up to today – buaya – my news aggregator of course to relay Free Software news worldwide