This is a massive upgrade, and a lot of the minor annoyances that users were finding about Lemmy has been fixed. You can check the above links for all the changes implemented but some of the major ones are:
Websockets replaced by HTTP: What this means for you is that instances will feel snappier due to less load, and the annoying sudden flood of new posts when browing hot is also gone. In general hot/active sorting has been reworked and feel much better to browse.
Links that would take you off-instance should now get automatically converted to ones that don’t. And just writing the name should be enough to turn it into a link. So no more manually searching for the linked communities you find in the comments.
Support for 2-Factor Authentification.
Custom emojis for Instances.
Support for PWA.
A Share Button.
Improvements to overall look and feel of Lemmy.
Not to mention many under the hood changes like database optimizations and bug fixes. This is a very big version upgrade that's come at just the right time.
However, some Instance admins encountered errors when trying to upgrade. And captchas, which we rely on to prevent bots from flooding in, will come back only in version 0.18.1.
So our options are to either upgrade now, maybe have some downtime and to turn on registration applications, or wait until v0.18.1 is released before upgrading (which shouldn't take more than a few days).
We are leaning towards option 2 for now, but interested in hearing what others have to say.
2FA is something I've been missing honestly, but I can wait until v0.18.1 for more stability. Thanks for the change log and the developers of Lemmy for this awesome update.
v0.18.1 is released before upgrading (which shouldn't take more than a few days)
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and an update that fixes bugs which break basic functionality is worth upgrading for immediately rather than waiting for over-the-rainbow. 2FA alone makes it pretty much not a realistic discussion, honestly.
I updated my small instance, it worked great. Until I rebooted the server then it stopped working entirely. I tried restarting the database and the app separately, but it never came back up. I had to wipe and reinstall as downgrading didn't work either. Due to issues with names no longer federating if the instance is recreated with the same domain and name I had to change my subdomain entirely as well. If for example a user was named user1@instance1.tld and you reinstall that instance using instance1.tld. If you recreate the user user1@instance1.tld, it will not federate any comments.
I may be a small use case, but it has made sure I'll be waiting a good long time before upgrading again.
Sounds like a good update, a couple of days shouldn't matter but I can see both sides to it, people want the latest and greatest but also if there are any issues that's not great as more people migrate to Lemmy
I sat wait. Right now Lemmy and this instance are working and usable. IDK why they'd pull captcha given the number of spam bots but that's worth waiting for IMHO especially if it's only a few days.
I remember reading through a discussion in which the dev popped in to explain their reasoning, maybe a Github issue? but yeah, if it will only be a few days work to implement a different capcha, probably better to wait.
I don't get why not wait a few days for the release then? If the problem is that easy to fix, is there some other issue that needs to be released ASAP?
Updating now and closing new user registrations for a few days is an option? I understand that it would be a problem, but it is supposed to take a few days
It's another few days with websockets, broken sorting, a front-page-breaking bug, and no 2FA. Plus the site is even more broken for everybody running the latest version of Jerboa till 0.18.0 gets installed.
I just updated Jerboa and now it won't let me login due to us not being on 0.18.0 :(
Not the end of the world if its just gonna be a couple of days, the (buggy) web version exists. But damn, was so used to Jerboa.
All fine points and I can't argue against those! Just my personal preference where I don't mind being miserable for another few days, particularly in the case where important anti-bot features are missing.
This is a major Lemmy upgrade, The FYFM server already asked/discussed upgrading taking the server off for a while, or wating another couple days until the full update was ready.
If you're worried about the Jerboa warning, just hit cancel, it still works just fine (still has bugs as is still in Alpha) life is better, smile and have fun!
I keep seeing stories about the amount of bot accounts flooding in. I think better not have a weakness for bots to exploit at a moment where the site is getting a lot of new attention.
Unfortunately none of the comments I've made from my instance are federating anywhere since I update.
Two factor is nice, however having it not create a barcode is a bit of a pain. You can create one locally if you install qr through pip (I'm sure there are many other ways but that one worked well for me). Just pip install qr. Once it's installed just type qr and paste the link given through lemmy. Worked for adding it to Aegis on my phone.