Original Toot: https://strangeobject.space/@silvermoon82/110969122337810598
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Neither does NextCloud. Self hosted bookmarks have been great.
I see NextCloud being talked about everywhere. I checked their website but still can't figure out a use case for personnal use.
What do you use it for?
It's basically Google drive or Dropbox but hosted yourself on your own server. It's an effort to set up and maintain but means it's entirely in your control.
It's a file sync platform. Say you have files you want to access from your desktop, you install next cloud and place the files there. They sync up with the next cloud server, presumably your NAS.
Now let's say you want to access those files from another machine. It could be a laptop, an Android phone, your friends, whatever. You just need to install the client and login, and there your files are, ready to sync to the new device.
Great use case would be syncing your computers user folders, such as my documents, desktop, etc. If you have to wipe your computer and start over, at least those items are preserved and easy to restore.
Otherwise sharing files with other machines in general is the main use.
how is it different from using something like syncthing?
It is much, much easier to setup than syncthing, uses a decent GUI interface that works well with Linux, Mac, Win, iOS & Android. Lots of additional features beyond file sync/sharing.
Much more in depth UI similar to Google drive kind of UI. Has a bunch of plugins to do other things too. Bookmarks being one of them. I personally use both they have similar syncing functions but work differently. Syncthing is nice for data just being on multiple devices where nextcloud is nice to have a UI and web site to go to anywhere. Nextcloud get the spousal approval much easier too.
I've been looking for a FOSS replacement for One drive, it seems like this is it. It seems great, I will definitely install it on my homelab then.
Thanks for the detailed description.
I use it as a backup location for pictures and videos I make with my phone and for bookmark storage. But you can use it to fully replace cloud services like OneDrive, GCloud or iCloud.
Is nextcloud the same as syncthing?
Syncthing just... syncs things. Say you have a folder that you want to automatically get synced between devices, syncthing is exactly for this.
If you want something like Google Drive, you can run Nextcloud, which is like a self hosted Google Drive, but more powerful. You upload files, which get saved to the server, not just synced between devices. Then you can also sync them, sync calendars, news (RSS feeds), edit documents in it (assuming you install the correct extension), and a lot more things.
That sounds pretty much just like SyncThing. Is the only difference that Nextcloud requires a server, rather than being decentralized?
Yep, it's centralized. However, it offers more functionality than just syncing stuff. If you only want to sync files, syncthing is the simpler, more lightweight solution :)
Nextcloud includes OpenOffice integration, like Google Docs, and loads of plugins, such as kanban project management, notes like Keep, galleries, etc. Very much unlike Syncthing, both are useful for slightly different things.
Ah gotcha; so with NextCloud I could have multiple people editing an OpenOffice file simultaneously, like Google docs? That's interesting, though not a use case that generally applies to me.
Correct. I think it's unnecessarily complex to setup and maintain if you only need to store files.