# Owncloud: does anyone use it? How do you rate it?



## fufukauliza (Aug 3, 2022)

Hello everybody,

I wanted a tool that would allow me to synchronize my files on the cloud and I was looking for it with a GUI.
I saw that there is owncloud so I went to their site to see the single user plans.
But first I wanted to know if any of you use it and how you are.
I also saw that the port is not very updated, we are currently at the official 2.10.1 version while the package is 2.8.2
Could it be worth the money?
This idea came to me not only for the GUI but also because I tried for example grive2 on my free Google drive space but I read on some Linux site that some users complained that Google had blocked its use and then re-enabled it.

Thank you all.


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## driesm (Aug 3, 2022)

I use the alternative Nextcloud, its a fork of Owncloud and I'm very happy with it.


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## fufukauliza (Aug 3, 2022)

driesm said:


> I use the alternative Nextcloud, its a fork of Owncloud and I'm very happy with it.


Ok, but Nextcloud not only on premise? I didn't find cloud plans.

Thank you.


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## driesm (Aug 3, 2022)

Ah yeah indeed, that's not something they offer, its meant to be self hosted somewhere. Sorry about that.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Aug 3, 2022)

Well Owncloud is the original project. Nextcloud is a fork from it, because some Owncloud developers were unhappy with how slow development at Owncloud became in certain areas.

You should expect slow sync speeds, especially if you've got folders which have thousands of small files. I'm using Nextcloud by myself, it's a mixed bag: some apps are quite stable in it, others well are more meh. 

If you just want Dropbox style fast file sync there are better OSS projects around, like Seafile - if you don't mind Chinese software.


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## jbo (Aug 3, 2022)

I'm using nextcloud personally and I am also hosting about a dozen nextcloud instances for private individuals, small companies and research teams. My experience with it is "meh but okay". It appears to be much more stable these days and updates are also more consistent by now.

However, as hardworkingnewbie already mentioned, performance is not great.

Non-technical people seem to have an easy time using it due to the multitude of options you have available:

Using the web interface
Using the desktop & mobile clients
Using your OS's WebDAV capabilities
Over the years, I found all three of these options to work equally well.


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## fufukauliza (Aug 3, 2022)

Guys thanks for the tips but I need a reliable client if possible with GUI to synchronize my files in the cloud.
I had seen owncloud and since the version of the port is a bit outdated I also wrote to the maintainer of the same to ask me how to compile for later versions starting from 2.10.1.
I tried to modify the makefile but there is also a patch included for version 2.8.2 which is the current one and which does not allow me to complete the compilation process for 2.10.1.

Thank you


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## jbo (Aug 3, 2022)

fufukauliza said:


> Guys thanks for the tips but I need a reliable client if possible with GUI to synchronize my files in the cloud.


Nextcloud has plenty of options there as per my list above. You get the Web client (which is a GUI). You can get the nextcloud app for Android, iPhone, Windows, Linux, MacOS and FreeBSD (which is also GUI). Or you can use your OS's WebDAV capabilities so your data shows up in your regular file browser like any ordinary directory would (hence, also GUI).


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## fufukauliza (Aug 3, 2022)

jbodenmann said:


> Nextcloud ha molte opzioni lì come da mio elenco sopra. Ottieni il client Web (che è una GUI). Puoi ottenere l'app nextcloud per Android, iPhone, Windows, Linux, MacOS e FreeBSD (che è anche GUI). Oppure puoi utilizzare le funzionalità WebDAV del tuo sistema operativo in modo che i tuoi dati vengano visualizzati nel tuo normale browser di file come farebbe qualsiasi directory normale (quindi, anche GUI).



Ma poi hanno piani non in premessa ma sul proprio spazio?
non li ho trovati.
Volevo qualcosa come Google Drive, Onedrive ecc ecc ma non gestito da me.

Grazie


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## jbo (Aug 3, 2022)

fufukauliza said:


> Ma poi hanno piani non in premessa ma sul proprio spazio?
> non li ho trovati.
> Volevo qualcosa come Google Drive, Onedrive ecc ecc ma non gestito da me.
> 
> Grazie


Please refer to forum rule #9. This forum is English-only.

You can find plenty of nextcloud hosting providers. The official nextcloud website even has a page for that: https://nextcloud.com/providers/


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## fufukauliza (Aug 3, 2022)

Ok, thanks.

Sorry, for the italian i use google translator and when copy the text I made a mistake .


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## hardworkingnewbie (Aug 3, 2022)

jbodenmann said:


> I'm using nextcloud personally and I am also hosting about a dozen nextcloud instances for private individuals, small companies and research teams. My experience with it is "meh but okay". It appears to be much more stable these days and updates are also more consistent by now.
> 
> However, as hardworkingnewbie already mentioned, performance is not great.


Well... yes. The reason for this is that the sync process, which Nextcloud uses, was actually quite simple: a single threaded upload of files. So if you had only a few files this was great, if you had a typical smartphone with photo folder, and let's say a few thousand files around 1-2 MB, this would take a lot of time due to network latency making this really slow because the transport protocol is HTTP.

First thing they introduced to remedey the situation was to make the upload multi-threaded, so now a few files in parallel are being uploaded.

In 2021 they introduced then for small files actually packing these together first, uploading it and then decomposing it on the server. I have no idea at the moment how quick this works, but it is in principle if I do remember similar to Dropbox. Dropbox since ages first puts many files into one, splits it into chunks and uploads these.

Also Nextcloud is not only sync, but wants to be more or less everything. The issue with that approach is that some modules do work very well, while others not so much. If top sync speed does not matter, or the metadata profile of files looks good it will do its job for sure.

There are also of course other ways someone could do it, like e.g.:


rsync. Of course this has no Web GUI then, but it can be indeed used to sync stuff. There are third party web GUIS around, but I don't know anything about these.
Git-Annex. It's basically Git, but stores the files outside the Git repository, because Git is bad at handling binary data.
Syncthing. This is peer-to-peer folder sharing between nodes with encryption, comes with a builtin Web GUI. I found the hash rate performance unsatisfactory back then when I tried to use it, which runs after adding files the first time.
Pydio or "Put your data into orbit", a French company providing sync stuff. It has an open source community edition.
Seafile, which primarily focused a long time on the sync aspect alone. Performance wise this is what came close to Dropbox in terms of sync speed and I/O back then when I tried it several years ago.
For Seafile, Pydio and Nextcloud are companies around, which do provide managed accounts so that you don't need to setup this stuff by yourself.


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## Jose (Aug 4, 2022)

I use Nextcloud mainly for its calendaring and contacts, but do have some files on it. Yes, it is slow compared to NFS or something like that. I keep meaning to try net/unison.


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## jbo (Aug 4, 2022)

Jose said:


> I keep meaning to try net/unison.


I was using net/unison back around 2009-ish. I have rather good memories of it.
Keep in mind that I was basically just a little kid back then with no real-life consequences of loosing data or anything like that so YMMV.


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## gotnull (Aug 28, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> If you just want Dropbox style fast file sync there are better OSS projects around, like Seafile - if you don't mind Chinese software.


It's been a while since I've heard of Seafile, it looks like the project is still in a good shape and well handled. 
Like you said it's a valuable replacement for Dropbox, the thing that bothers me the most is client using QT, but I see that they added a cli tool which could be nice though but less friendly.
I didn't know it was a chinese software I always thought it was German or Swiss, don't ask me why I couldn't answer.



jbodenmann said:


> You can find plenty of nextcloud hosting providers. The official nextcloud website even has a page for that: https://nextcloud.com/providers/


It's probably a good option, the list of providers is quite long :








						GitHub - nextcloud/providers: community-maintained list of Nextcloud providers
					

community-maintained list of Nextcloud providers. Contribute to nextcloud/providers development by creating an account on GitHub.




					github.com
				



I have got an 'meh' experience with Zaclys's plan which was not that good regarding the performance but really cheap. 
Things that I installed myself in VMs (with 1 or 2 cores) on my local network are working *way* better, so experience may vary depending on providers.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Aug 28, 2022)

Well, Seafile's development is indeed being done in China. There was a company in Germany for a while which did selling hosting services and support for Seafile in Europe. But they split apart, settled down later their dispute and since 2017 a company called datamate in Mainz is doing the selling job instead.


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## gotnull (Aug 31, 2022)

Well that makes sense, my little brain somehow remembered the Seafile's German journey I guess. Thank you for the explanation ;-)
I hope they are doing well, we don't see the name a lot in media/forum lately. May be I could give it another try for fun one day, just to see how it goes.


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