Release banner for Hubzilla 9.0 Hubzilla 9.0 is here and delivers many improvements under the hood and at the UI level. Two of the most asked features have been implemented: repeats a.k.a. boosts and adjustable theme colors at the channel and site level. Hubmins can also customize other components via the bootstrap sass variables.
Under the hood we implemented a short term object cash which will improve performance when fetching objects. The internal use of ActivityStreams1 has been deprecated in favor of ActivityStreams2. Object integrity proofs (EddsaSignatures) according to fep-8b32 have been implemented. Interesting for developers: CI and the test environment have been vastly improved.
Other notable changes are: refactored browser to browser encryption using the modern sodium crypto library and support for custom emojis with configurable emoji sets.
For a complete list of changes in Hubzilla 9.0 please refer to the changelog.
A big THANK YOU! to all contributors and everybody who supports Hubzilla and its development.
Breaking changes
The .htaccess file has been updated to fix an issue with recent Apache versions
Require sodium PHP extension
Require bcmath or gmp PHP extension
Require intl PHP extension
Versions < 9.0 will not be able to decrypt encrypted messages composed in version 9.0 in the UI
Poke and Mood apps removed
Removed smiley button addon
Removed smiley_pack addon
Removed emojione addon (use the emoji addon instead)
Removed fediwordle addon (use the fediquest addon instead)
Individual connection filters need manual intervention (e.g. replace http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/share with Announce when filtering repeats)
Update
Backup your data
Make sure that the sodium PHP extension is installed and enabled
Make sure that either the bcmath or gmp PHP extension is installed and enabled
Make sure that the intl PHP extension is installed and enabled
#Hubzilla is a powerful platform for creating interconnected websites featuring a decentralized identity, communications, and permissions framework built using common webserver technology.
@Plastic Paragraph I used to run a personal Lemmy instance, but I saw no added value over following and responding in lemmy communities from my Hubzilla account (streams should work likewise). Also, I never had a mastodon account, while following a bunch them from Hubzilla. But I shun micro-blogging discussions anyway, so I rather follow the original poster's RSS feed now, which cleaned up my Hubzilla timeline significantly. Mastodon has too many limitations to handle access controlled macroblog communication, anyway, and I refuse to compensate that with all their manual marking demanding, so I won't actively engage in many conversations, anyway. In fact, I just realize that this is a mastodon conversation...
No experience with pixelfed and Firefish, though. Diaspora works, too, but I disabled the plugin because diaspora is not designed for interoperability.
@Mario Vavti One great thing, that works well now in HZ is, that gup.pe groups seem to reliably display notifications about their repeats now. Thank you much for this!
I have just pushed a hotfix for the Article/Note issue to master. Have not created a release yet but you can fetch the update by running util/udall once again...
Basically i have reverted the change and we will be sending Note activity types again until a better solution is found.
One for posts/DMs with a title, regardless of summary.
One for posts/DMs with a summary.
One for posts/DMs without either.
One for comments.
In fact, the last two could be ditched altogether. But at least the first one would mimick how Friendica does things (with title = Article-type, with no title = Note-type). And it absolutely makes sense to send long, blog-style posts as Article-type objects and have Mastodon only show the title, the summary, a link to the original and the hashtags.
In fact, Mastodon's handling of Article-type objects is most likely not a bug but fully intentional. And I'd really like Hubzilla to support it. Just not always.
Mastodon's handling of Article was done just to piss me off. I filed an issue on Mastodon back in the early days of ActivityPub asking if the complete and total stripping of HTML tags could be relaxed on the Article type - and other software that used HTML would happily use that instead of Note. Eugen resolved the bug by removing the content entirely and turning it into a link. Nope. Can't have any of that nasty HTML on Mastodon; even though that is the default mediaType for ActivityPub.
I will never file another issue on Mastodon, no matter how critical the issue is. As it exists today, Article has been destroyed for other software to ever use correctly, in the same way that summary and the addressing fields have.
@mario do you think there is any chance we'll see a #docker image for #Hubzilla as I had to give up my hub after moving away from cPanel hosting? I now keep all my services segmented in their own Docker containers.
@Danie van der Merwe We are actually building a docker image as part of the CI pipeline. I've been thinking about splitting this out, so it can be released as a separate artifact. (It would be good for the CI runs as well.) I can try to push it up on my priority list.
@harald that would really be great as not only way easier to install and update, it will likely boost more hubs as well. I really prefer Hubzilla and would love to get my own hub back up and running (migrate my nomadic identity back to it). I'll keep my eyes open for announcements in future.
Why would one use Hubzilla? It’s mentioned a lot, but not sure why it’s different to Friendica / Mastodon /etc? New-ish to the Fediverse and interested in the nomadic identity you mentioned.
@PlasticParagraph you can look at my video overview I did on Hubzilla at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9nCAOM5V1g. It is most similar to Friendica, and has quite a bit of what Facebook has. It is full length blogs and also connects to Diaspora and other networks. Right now the full nomadic ID is only on Hubzilla, until maybe ActivityPub and Mastodon expand later to include that. Mastodon is 500 chars max microblogging without all the bells and whistles Hubzilla and Friendica have. All post to Fediverse tho.
@danie10 Thanks a mill, will go have a look at the video! Yes the type of site isn't the issue, it's more about being able to interact with the other Fedi sites without needing all the other accounts. And the nomadic ID sounds like something that's been in the mind for a while. Keen to check it out now, thanks again! 😄
@PlasticParagraph Mastodon is fine to use if you just want to do short microblogging. You need to decide if you want to use any of the extra Hubzilla and Friendica apps and functions. ANY of them will be visible across the whole Fediverse so you only need to have an account in one place - unless you're me ;-)
@danie10 Thanks for the explanation, asking because having tested Pixelfed, Mastodon, Firefish, Lemmy, etc. It seems like they don't all allow to operate, follow or interact as one would imagine based on how they make it sound in articles or on some of the sites. So looking for something that might be:
a) one place to host your id (nomad?)
b) can interact across the Fediverse without needing a bunch of accounts, like non-fedi/other social sites
There is a working docker image, maintained by myself (I'll update it to version 9 when I get back), and is in use already by many people, including myself (I run it behind traefik).
It skips the setup screens, and drops the owner straight into their hub, ready for use. It includes logrot (setup, and ready out of the box), as well as other nifty addons and 'nice-to-haves'; which all (of course) are configurable by the owner, pre and post deployment.
I'm open to issues, and discussions. Give it a try.
@dhitchenor thank you I'll have a look at that as I'd found one or two images in the past, but they had not been updated for 4 to 5 years so was reluctant to use them.
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