How do I browse the list of users?

https://toots.matapacos.dog/directory (then tick the “From matapacos.dog only” button)

This link can be found in the bottom left corner, near the about links and software version and whatnot. All recent activity will be also be sorted chronologically in the local feed if you are looking for people who are active.

Mastodon’s lack of search and quote tweets and stuff really bums me out.

Quote tweets are probably never coming in official mastodon, but some other compatible federated softwares have them, along with some Mastodon forks (not Hometown though :/).

The search function in Mastodon is unique. CURRENTLY, you opt-in to making your posts searchable by including hashtags, and people search for hashtags. There is a text search function, but it only searches posts you have already liked, boosted, or bookmarked. The text search is mainly useful for digging up an old post you remember liking. It was deliberately designed not to search the whole network to prevent trolls from namesearching and jumping into people’s conversations.

This appears to be changing soon though. I think they are going to make it do full text search of everything which is known to the instance. There are mixed feelings about this naturally.

Discovery and getting started on Mastodon is a bit rough. It is not very convenient to lurk. You basically need to follow people, engage, and post, because the source of discovery is mainly through other users. Sometimes you get lucky on hashtags or the federated feed, but generally you need to start by following people from the local timeline and seeing the stuff they boost.