The only annoying part about it (and believe me, it is certainly annoying) is trying to subscribe to a community that no one on your home instance has subscribed to yet. I don’t think I ever got it to work. The UX of that needs to be improved, definitely. But once your instance has at least one person subscribed to a community your instance “knows” about it and it shows up in the search (and “r/all”, not sure what to call it on Lemmy) just like everything else on your instance.

So no, it’s really not all that different except for brand new communities no one on your instance has subscribed to yet.