@homer77 So most differences are backend stuff, if I understood correctly
@Mek101 For now it's not much more than a backend, so yes 😁
You need Tusky or Pinafore to have a UI.
What will be beyond backend is that users will be able to decide e.g. if a post will be boostable replyable or favourable. Also if it will be federated or stay local. I guess there will be more but they seem to want to stay close to the defacto activityPub standard of the mastodon api for max compatibility.
@Mek101 I don't want to copy paste from the docs, so have a look yourself: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/#history-and-status In combination with the roadmap I linked to you will get an idea of what they like to emphasize (security, privacy, lightness, easy to setup, aso)
It's still alpha yet but already easy to setup and test in the wild.