Federation is kinda clunky, there is no way to see content posted before you federated, same with upvotes, so top of all time is different across communities. But most annoying of all is that to see the communities you have to paste the full link into search. Big instances can rely on some of the users doing it but for single user instance you have to go to bigger instances and see their list of communities and copy-paste the links into your instance search bar, otherwise you cant see any new posts from those.

In my own experience, it's clunky and can be a pain to get running, even when using a docker. The Federation also can be a bit iffy at times.