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I am keeping an ever watchful eye on social networks on where to spread our glorious Linux gaming news. Mastodon [Official Site, Github] has caught my eye as it's open source and decentralized. Come join us on it.

Our profile: https://mastodon.social/users/gamingonlinux

I don't know if it will be a hit or not, but Twitter has been frustrating me more and more as time goes on. With their constant attempts to interfere with timelines, their annoying adverts and so on. Facebook is even worse with messing with timelines.

For me, Mastodon is different as it's one of the few open social networks that doesn't look terrible (subjective I know), and doesn't mess with timelines. It emulates Tweetdeck (which I actually like using).

So if you're looking for a more open social network, feel free to follow us on it.

I am looking into a way to have our news auto-published to Mastodon using PHP, if anyone could help me devise a way to do it that would be awesome. Feel free to PM me if you're interested in doing that, you can find info on their API on their Wiki.

Also, while we're here, we are also on Telegram [Official Site] (which has such a lovely desktop and mobile client!):
- Telegram news channel
- Linux gaming chat group
- Linux (generic) chat group Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
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Shmerl Nov 23, 2016
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: crt0megaY not diaspora?
I am looking into that right now.

Thanks. I'm using diaspora* for a while, and so far it's the most developed option.
Shmerl Nov 23, 2016
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: crt0mega
Quoting: liamdaweI am looking into that right now.
Great! :)
Is there a way to post content to diaspora from PHP?

I suppose it should be possible. Diaspora* has various bookmarklets for posting. You can probably reproduce it from PHP.


Last edited by Shmerl on 24 November 2016 at 12:22 am UTC
eyome Nov 23, 2016
Quoting: BlauerHungerI'd like to have an open XMPP conference for Gaming On Linux. I'm sure there are some PHP libs for XMPP out there which you can use to automatically post new articles there.

Hey, this is approximately what is proposed by Movim. And there is already a Gameonlinux stream ;-)

Crystal Dagger Nov 23, 2016
In my humble opinion it actually looks better than Twitter it has a more "minimalistic" and well made interface, but then again I never liked or had a Twitter account :P.


Last edited by Crystal Dagger on 23 November 2016 at 10:41 pm UTC
ProfessorKaos64 Nov 24, 2016
Problem for me is too many clients. I always fall back to IRC. Trusty, easy, and clients galore on all platforms. I get it from a social network perspective. Anyone want a deb package for this?


Last edited by ProfessorKaos64 on 24 November 2016 at 12:55 am UTC
Creak Nov 24, 2016
I'm using Diaspora* for a couple of years now. I think it's the most advanced decentralized social network. And also they're developing an agnostic API so that Diaspora* is just one server/client application of the whole network. There are also Friendica and Redmatrix (and maybe others) that can connect to the network as well, as you can see here: the-federation.info.

I don't know if Mastodon is part of the federation though... If it is then yeay! else there's a strong possibility that the project won't gather enough users to be interesting.

You can ask Fla ([email protected]) on Diaspora* about the possibilities to cross-post with a PHP plugin. I'm pretty sure it exists, I'm following a few accounts that I don't think they're entering the post manually.

Edit: actually GoL is one of the few sites that makes me stay on G+, but I'd really like to ditch G+ at some point.

I'm registered on this pod: framasphere.org, it's maintained by Framasoft, a french association that promotes free software and encourages to leave the GAFAM.

In D*, I like the fact that you can write your posts in Markdown, it gives you a lot of freedom in how you present your content. You can put an image right at the top, or in the middle of your post for instance.


Last edited by Creak on 24 November 2016 at 2:22 am UTC
Creak Nov 24, 2016
That being said, Mastodon is a Twitter-like while Diaspora* is a Facebook-like. So it depends on the style of posts you want to do. I personally never really understood Twitter, although I tested it for a few years, I ended up using it like a poor RSS client.
aqeeliz Nov 24, 2016
Just a note, Mastodon is GNU-Social (StatusNet previously, and laconi.ca before that) compatible. Also, you can post messages between diaspora and GS (there were some issues in some cases, but as I don't use it myself so not sure if they are still there or not), so you should be able to post between Mastodon & Diaspora (but again, not sure).
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