Mastodon would be okay if it weren't for about 17 very vocal gatekeepers who spend their lives lecturing everyone on how it wasn't like twitter and we should feel bad for wanting something that was.

I'd say this type of layout that focuses more on long form textual content is better for tech savvy people who are likely to stick with the fediverse than the twitter clone that Mastodon was.

The main thing I like about mastodon is the small communities seem to make it easier to have meaningful conversations.

Can you point me to the FOSS/Linux community? I'm actually looking for that too.

I'm also new here and I love it! I stopped really interacting with anyone or making content on reddit a few years ago. Federated instances are so much fun. I am inspired again.

100% agreed with you, I much prefer this type of site.

I tried mastodon, saw it was like twitter and never used it again lol. I like the deaddit feel much more

Awesome! Welcome to Lemmy, I hope you have a great stay :D
Lurking is also always an option, I tend to do it myself quite a lot as well hehe

I am a long time Twitter user. Singed up in 2007. Mastodon felt like a superior platform and I've been quietly waiting for Lemmy to take off.

Mastodon has big “this is the year of the Linux desktop” energy, just self-absorbed posting and no collaboration between users. Aside from a rare few exceptions, it’s a bunch of frumps. All the shitposters went to BlueSky.

I hope the cross-service-integration will get better. Think about the many embedded tweets within reddit. Now think how nice a seamless discussion of all participating on either mastodon or Lemmy will be.

Me too!