We just added Alexandrite to the server, it’s an alternative desktop UI for Lemmy created by Sheodox who worked tirelessly to make the necessary changes to we could host it ourselves here. So go to https://a.lemmy.world and have a look!

He continues to update it constantly, you can follow the development on his github page or in his community. If you like what you see and want to support him, why not buy him a coffee? :)

For those who don’t have Lemmy World as their home instance and want to use Alexandrite, either ask your instance admins to add it or go to https://alexandrite.app!

Edit: I should probably have mentioned that Alexandrite is meant for desktop!

    • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldOP
      49·
      1 year ago

      Rate limits are being tweaked to combat ddos. You might experience some issues while they are being optimised. Apologies

    • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I tried to reload the page because it already showed an error.

      I did get a successful hit on the web page. It’s good that they are finally tackling the screen width issue. It also comes with auto-reloads as well.

      My only complaint is that the items are a bit too tall. It could be shrink down to a more compact space to fit more items per screen-full.

  • miket@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    1 year ago

    Wow, thank you. I acutally was hoping you were going to add this becasue Alexandrite is the best desktop UI for Lemmy so far.

    It also means Lemmy.world is turning into the best instance already because they’re the most user-friendly and customizable one.

    Great work!

    FYI: I got rated limited on the first link but the second time worked right away. There might be some glitch there.

  • alokir@lemmy.world
    28·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for adding these UIs as an alternative. Especially m.lemmy.world, it feels like a native app.

  • CamelCase@lemm.ee
    20·
    1 year ago

    That’s how it should work! Click on post and instantly see the content and comments, without loading a whole page

  • The King@lemmy.world
    16·
    1 year ago

    It’s really great that you are moving so quickly and supporting your community in this way, but I wonder if all these front ends are potentially going to create a bit of a long term maintenance headache? How are we certain that they don’t introduce any new vulnerabilities and how are we staying on top of those when they happen? I worry that each new frontend adds burden to an already small community for a potentially minor practical gain.

    Don’t get me wrong, you guys are doing awesome stuff, and I’m consistently impressed with this instance. That’s just the first thing that comes to my head having done software for many years myself.

    • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldOP
      18·
      1 year ago

      Maintenance in regards to updates is not an issue. All the extra frontends we added run in docker and are automatically updated twice a day to make sure we are always running the latest stable versions. All apps are using the Lemmy api’s just like the 3rd party apps and should anything break we have ways to contact the developers.

      • Nix@merv.news
        2·
        1 year ago

        How did you set them up to automatically update? Have you done a write up on how you set these up? Would be great for other admins to be able to do the same

        • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldOP
          9·
          1 year ago

          We use docker compose in scripts and crontabs

          /scripts/update-alexandrite.sh:

          cd /opt/alexandrite
docker-compose pull
docker-compose down
docker-compose up -d

          Then use crontab -e and add this line:

          00 05,00 * * * bash /scripts/update-alexandrite.sh

          • LukeSky53@lemmy.world
            3·
            1 year ago

            Are you concerned at all with auto updating containers that some updates can break stuff?

            I’ve had issues with watchtower and auto updating containers in the past breaking config files and stopping containers.

            Changing the update rate in cron can help offset any broken / vulnerable updates that get pushed.

          • Nix@merv.news
            1·
            1 year ago

            Sweet thanks, do you have this and scripts to keep the other front ends updated on GitHub somewhere?

              • Nix@merv.news
                2·
                1 year ago

                I understand but a lot of admins that are hosting instances just for themselves and a couple of friends have little no experience running a server so having a github with different tips and best practices would be very useful. I hope you consider it :)

  • fidodo@lemmy.world
    14·
    1 year ago

    I want to caution that every new ui is a potential security risk. When it’s a mobile app then it’s entirely on the user to decide if they trust it, but when it’s hosted the host is implicitly giving a seal of approval so I think at least a bit of a code audit should be done, especially since xss is much more of a risk on the web.

    There’s already been one security breach on the default Lemmy skin, so I think it would be a good idea to do an audit for every new hosted ui and include a section for it on these posts. You don’t necessarily need to crawl through every line of course, but it’d be good to cover what framework and rendering engine it uses and acknowledge any risks associated with them.

    • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      1 year ago

      We have the devs of all but one of the alternative UI’s on our discord server. We try to provide options for our users as well as give some extra exposure to the Lemmy developers community by hosting these on LW. It’s actually pretty cool to see that devs from different apps are going through each other’s code and are being helpful. And other community members are actively helping the developers test (and request) new features.

      So that is one of the things that we did to “play safe”. But I understand your concern and I’ll have a talk with the team how we can organise something like a code review of the UI’s we host.

      We have one more UI to be announced soon. And that will most likely be the last one we will add.

  • daninet@lemmy.world
    14·
    1 year ago

    Am I missing smthing? If I open vygr or old I see posts. When I open a.lemmy I can only see a generic post about lemmy nothing else

    • sheodox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      1 year ago

      (dev here) Sorry! The post forgot to mention Alexandrite is meant to be a alternate UI for desktop. There are a lot of issues if you try using it on mobile at the moment, because I haven’t done the work to support it yet. I would keep using whatever you’ve been using on mobile.

  • Shazbot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    Just dropping in to say this UI is beautiful and the features are superb. Thank yous for all the lemmy world staff and Sheodox for the time and dedication!

  • Nato Boram@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    Seeing custom web UIs being deployed officially and directly on the same domain as Lemmy instances is incredibly encouraging. I wonder if my Leanish will be polished enough to be published that way eventually.

    One can dream!

  • OrangeCorvus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    I like the UI so much more than the standard Lemmy. This should be the default UI. Hopefully he make a light version.