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Although this is a nice write up about a possible setup for self hosted alternatives for popular cloud services, I don't like it. It falls short to compare the

Although this is a nice write up about a possible setup for self hosted alternatives for popular cloud services, I don't like it. It falls short to compare the different possible services and the possibilities you can have with them. OwnCloud is nice, but why should I pick on OwnCloud and not SeaFile. Ampache is cool, but why not Subsonic? I would like to read the reasoning behind the individual choices OR the reasoning behind the overall choice of moving a way from big corp products. It feels to much like a "look at my setup" posts, which are nice to read but it could be much better. But, my input now: OwnCloud is wonderful for file syncing but where it really shines is the contact and calendar sync. It is the easiest to install and best accessable web interface Cal/CardDAV software out there. Radicale is a wonderfull little python Cal/CardDAV server but it hasn't got a web interface which is a feature I do miss when I don't have it. OwnCloud is really pulling through on the whole "google replacement", work has been started on a mail client which looks very nice and works decently (for now). Ampache is cool but I found the installation to be too fiddly and easy to break. It could be my incompetence with that product but I prefer subsonic. A java product which just runs and it runs well. The webinterface desperately needs a good UIoverall but it works and it doesn't get in the way. RocketChat I don't know and I should look into but I do feel that XMPP should be the chat replacement for all. The fedearation, the gazillion clients and the maturity of the software is just so so nice that I am sad that it isn't more popular. I feel it's a huge shame google and facebook stopped fedarating their xmpp services.

tombrossman 11y ago
I've installed and abandoned ownCloud several times, mostly because it is far too heavy for what I need and I had concerns about its security. I also had to set up EncFS on my local machines for client-side encryption of sensitive files because there was no way I was trusting that to ownCloud server-side. It took more work to set up but I have Seafile self-hosted on the smallest DigitalOcean VPS and it works beautifully. $5/month, plenty of space for the amount of files I need to sync across machines, and my data is in Germany which is great (I'm in Europe). Native client-side encryption is built-in to the client so I have an easier configuration on local machines, and it does most of what I need. I'm still looking for a good self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV option that doesn't require PHP or MySQL, but as this data is less sensitive I'm happy to trust it to FastMail for now.
- vincentkriek 11y ago
  > I also had to set up EncFS on my local machines for client-side encryption of sensitive files because there was no way I was trusting that to ownCloud server-side. Did you host OwnCloud yourself? But you didn't trust the software with your files? In what way is the SeaFile solution you are running now more trustworthy? > I'm still looking for a good self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV option that doesn't require PHP or MySQL, but as this data is less sensitive I'm happy to trust it to FastMail for now. http://radicale.org/ http://radicale.org/ is exactly what you are looking for.
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - tombrossman 11y ago
    > Did you host OwnCloud yourself? Yes, I prefer to self-host anything I can. I'm lucky to have a gigabit FTTH connection and moving lots of data around is no problem. I still prefer to use a remote VPS because some things are best left to the pros. > But you didn't trust the software with your files? In what way is the SeaFile solution you are running now more trustworthy? Seafile has a much smaller attack surface (no PHP, MySQL not required, etc) and handles the client-side encryption itself. We are discussing degrees of trust here, so while I was happy to trust ownCloud and the VPS to be there for a request, and to not corrupt my data, I didn't trust that my sensitive data was safe if the server was compromised. EncFS was a workaround, but it cluttered up Nautilus with extra drives since every encrypted directory had to be mounted as a drive. Now I'm comfortable trusting Seafile to do all that because an attacker would need to compromise both my VPS and my local machine to gain access to sensitive data. This is orders of magnitude less likely and for me is an acceptable risk, especially considering the simpler software stack. And I'm definitely checking out radicale, thanks for the tip. If it does contact photo sync (annoyingly not currently supported my FastMail CardDAV) I'll give it a try.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      When I was reviewing alternatives, syncany's web page claimed that seafile has a poor security record: https://github.com/syncany/syncany/wiki/Comparison:-Syncany-vs.-X https://github.com/syncany/syncany/wiki/Comparison:-Syncany-... I'm not sure how seriously to take this.
stephenr 11y ago
> RocketChat I don't know and I should look into but I do feel that XMPP should be the chat replacement for all Agreed. Given that there are multiple, open source servers, several good open source Web clients and literally hundreds of native libraries/clients, XMPP seems like the obvious choice here. What irks me even more - Rocket Chats homepage: > Native client applications available for download on Linux, Windows and OSX. Rocket Chat's GitHub Repo for the "Native" desktop Apps: https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Electron https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Electron Call it a desktop app, sure. I won't use it, but I won't begrudge you the term desktop app. If you're bundling NodeJS and using a webview, your app isn't native.
- Klathmon 11y ago
  I don't get this. Why does the language it's written in make it "not native"? Firefox is pretty "native", yet practically all of the UI is powered by JS. Hell some of the built in programs in windows 10 are using html/js/css and if you are going to argue that the built-in "part of the OS" programs aren't native, then what is? If you can see performance issues or problems with how it works then point those out, don't just blanket knock an entire application because you don't like the languages it uses.
  - STRML 11y ago
    Well, that's just the issue. I have no problem with Electron apps as an idea, but they're often coupled with extremely slow rendering. You can tell immediately. For instance, in Slack, which is more or less an Electron app / browser in a box, I can easily get it down to <5 fps just by posting a snippet or going too far in scrollback. Resizing the window is beyond painful, etc., etc. It all seems unbelievably unnecessary - why should a chat program, literally text on a screen, perform like this on a top-of-the-line quad-core i7 system?
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      Having a problem with the performance is perfect criticism, but the commenter i was replying to was bashing it because of it's choice, not because of it's performance. He won't even try it before saying that. web rendering doesn't automatically make an app slow. And in my experience choosing a "common" platform like the web allows an app to run everywhere. I'm not suddenly going to be able to triple my development speed, so without the common platform that means that i'd only be able to support one major platform, or all platforms but with a small fraction of the development speed, and most likely many more bugs. And to be fair, saying slack is nothing more than "text on a screen" is really oversimplifying it. There are tons of formatting options, code highlighting, embedded HTML, embedded video and images, attachments, coloring, emojis, and more. It seems like a pretty obvious choice to go with a web rendering engine seeing as it supports almost all of that "natively".
jancborchardt 11y ago
ownCloud designer here – thanks a lot for the kind words! We’re also about to improve the web interfaces for Calendar and Contacts in coming ownCloud versions. Also, I’m glad you like the Mail app although it’s in a very early stage! If you experience any issues or have feature requests, please let us know at https://github.com/owncloud/mail/issues https://github.com/owncloud/mail/issues :)
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  I have a question about owncloud if you don't mind: Is there any way to run owncloud modularly? For example: I'd like just the calendar setup. I don't want to sync files, or share pictures with it, etc. Is there any way I can set up just the features I want, and disable the rest? I have very briefly looked over how to do this, but haven't found anything.
  - jancborchardt 11y ago
    You can enable and disable pretty much everything – except Files. That’s because it’s the core app and others like Gallery, PDF viewing, Music etc of course rely on there being files. There have been requests to even make it possible to disable the Files app, but we don’t really see that as priority and rather focus on keeping ownCloud rock stable and secure while still driving features forward. We are a very small team and an open source project, so I guess that’s understandable. :) As a really dirty hack, meanwhile you could just hide the Files icon from the menu via CSS. But, well … ;)
flarg 11y ago
My 2 cents re Ampache - it's pretty cool but doesn't play all media types, where as Kodi (XBMC) plays more media types and has a couple of great Android clients (that play locally).. I did get localplay up and running on Ampache but it's less flexible than Kodi Android clients.
mattdotc 11y ago
Another subsonic user here...for a very long time as well. You'd have to have a very good product to get me to switch. I donated years ago to the project and I'm grandfathered into the 'premium' app.
CaptSpify 11y ago
> Ampache is cool but I found the installation to be too fiddly and easy to break. It could be my incompetence with that product but I prefer subsonic. A java product which just runs and it runs well. The webinterface desperately needs a good UIoverall but it works and it doesn't get in the way. I use ampache, but you are absolutely correct: it is fiddly, and breaks easy. Subsonic also does "just work". I personally like ampache because it's much less resource-intensive on my webserver, and easier to fiddle with (I'm also a java-hater), but Subsonic is much more approachable.
jeena 11y ago
What doesn't work well with XMPP is history on all my devices. I want to use it on my work computer, then when it's time to go I'd like to change to my phone on the way to the train station, then on the train I'd like to keep on chatting on my laptop and when I'm home I'd like to end the discussion on my iMac. I still want to be able to scroll up and to read what I or anyone else in that chat room said before. This seems to be a feature where XAMPP and IRC fail me.

tombrossman 11y ago

I've installed and abandoned ownCloud several times, mostly because it is far too heavy for what I need and I had concerns about its security. I also had to set up EncFS on my local machines for client-side encryption of sensitive files because there was no way I was trusting that to ownCloud server-side. It took more work to set up but I have Seafile self-hosted on the smallest DigitalOcean VPS and it works beautifully. $5/month, plenty of space for the amount of files I need to sync across machines, and my data is in Germany which is great (I'm in Europe). Native client-side encryption is built-in to the client so I have an easier configuration on local machines, and it does most of what I need. I'm still looking for a good self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV option that doesn't require PHP or MySQL, but as this data is less sensitive I'm happy to trust it to FastMail for now.

vincentkriek 11y ago
> I also had to set up EncFS on my local machines for client-side encryption of sensitive files because there was no way I was trusting that to ownCloud server-side. Did you host OwnCloud yourself? But you didn't trust the software with your files? In what way is the SeaFile solution you are running now more trustworthy? > I'm still looking for a good self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV option that doesn't require PHP or MySQL, but as this data is less sensitive I'm happy to trust it to FastMail for now. http://radicale.org/ http://radicale.org/ is exactly what you are looking for.
- deleted 11y ago
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- tombrossman 11y ago
  > Did you host OwnCloud yourself? Yes, I prefer to self-host anything I can. I'm lucky to have a gigabit FTTH connection and moving lots of data around is no problem. I still prefer to use a remote VPS because some things are best left to the pros. > But you didn't trust the software with your files? In what way is the SeaFile solution you are running now more trustworthy? Seafile has a much smaller attack surface (no PHP, MySQL not required, etc) and handles the client-side encryption itself. We are discussing degrees of trust here, so while I was happy to trust ownCloud and the VPS to be there for a request, and to not corrupt my data, I didn't trust that my sensitive data was safe if the server was compromised. EncFS was a workaround, but it cluttered up Nautilus with extra drives since every encrypted directory had to be mounted as a drive. Now I'm comfortable trusting Seafile to do all that because an attacker would need to compromise both my VPS and my local machine to gain access to sensitive data. This is orders of magnitude less likely and for me is an acceptable risk, especially considering the simpler software stack. And I'm definitely checking out radicale, thanks for the tip. If it does contact photo sync (annoyingly not currently supported my FastMail CardDAV) I'll give it a try.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    When I was reviewing alternatives, syncany's web page claimed that seafile has a poor security record: https://github.com/syncany/syncany/wiki/Comparison:-Syncany-vs.-X https://github.com/syncany/syncany/wiki/Comparison:-Syncany-... I'm not sure how seriously to take this.

stephenr 11y ago

> RocketChat I don't know and I should look into but I do feel that XMPP should be the chat replacement for all Agreed. Given that there are multiple, open source servers, several good open source Web clients and literally hundreds of native libraries/clients, XMPP seems like the obvious choice here. What irks me even more - Rocket Chats homepage: > Native client applications available for download on Linux, Windows and OSX. Rocket Chat's GitHub Repo for the "Native" desktop Apps: https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Electron https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Electron Call it a desktop app, sure. I won't use it, but I won't begrudge you the term desktop app. If you're bundling NodeJS and using a webview, your app isn't native.

Klathmon 11y ago
I don't get this. Why does the language it's written in make it "not native"? Firefox is pretty "native", yet practically all of the UI is powered by JS. Hell some of the built in programs in windows 10 are using html/js/css and if you are going to argue that the built-in "part of the OS" programs aren't native, then what is? If you can see performance issues or problems with how it works then point those out, don't just blanket knock an entire application because you don't like the languages it uses.
- STRML 11y ago
  Well, that's just the issue. I have no problem with Electron apps as an idea, but they're often coupled with extremely slow rendering. You can tell immediately. For instance, in Slack, which is more or less an Electron app / browser in a box, I can easily get it down to <5 fps just by posting a snippet or going too far in scrollback. Resizing the window is beyond painful, etc., etc. It all seems unbelievably unnecessary - why should a chat program, literally text on a screen, perform like this on a top-of-the-line quad-core i7 system?
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    Having a problem with the performance is perfect criticism, but the commenter i was replying to was bashing it because of it's choice, not because of it's performance. He won't even try it before saying that. web rendering doesn't automatically make an app slow. And in my experience choosing a "common" platform like the web allows an app to run everywhere. I'm not suddenly going to be able to triple my development speed, so without the common platform that means that i'd only be able to support one major platform, or all platforms but with a small fraction of the development speed, and most likely many more bugs. And to be fair, saying slack is nothing more than "text on a screen" is really oversimplifying it. There are tons of formatting options, code highlighting, embedded HTML, embedded video and images, attachments, coloring, emojis, and more. It seems like a pretty obvious choice to go with a web rendering engine seeing as it supports almost all of that "natively".

jancborchardt 11y ago

ownCloud designer here – thanks a lot for the kind words! We’re also about to improve the web interfaces for Calendar and Contacts in coming ownCloud versions. Also, I’m glad you like the Mail app although it’s in a very early stage! If you experience any issues or have feature requests, please let us know at https://github.com/owncloud/mail/issues https://github.com/owncloud/mail/issues :)

CaptSpify 11y ago
I have a question about owncloud if you don't mind: Is there any way to run owncloud modularly? For example: I'd like just the calendar setup. I don't want to sync files, or share pictures with it, etc. Is there any way I can set up just the features I want, and disable the rest? I have very briefly looked over how to do this, but haven't found anything.
- jancborchardt 11y ago
  You can enable and disable pretty much everything – except Files. That’s because it’s the core app and others like Gallery, PDF viewing, Music etc of course rely on there being files. There have been requests to even make it possible to disable the Files app, but we don’t really see that as priority and rather focus on keeping ownCloud rock stable and secure while still driving features forward. We are a very small team and an open source project, so I guess that’s understandable. :) As a really dirty hack, meanwhile you could just hide the Files icon from the menu via CSS. But, well … ;)

flarg 11y ago

My 2 cents re Ampache - it's pretty cool but doesn't play all media types, where as Kodi (XBMC) plays more media types and has a couple of great Android clients (that play locally).. I did get localplay up and running on Ampache but it's less flexible than Kodi Android clients.

mattdotc 11y ago

Another subsonic user here...for a very long time as well. You'd have to have a very good product to get me to switch. I donated years ago to the project and I'm grandfathered into the 'premium' app.

CaptSpify 11y ago

> Ampache is cool but I found the installation to be too fiddly and easy to break. It could be my incompetence with that product but I prefer subsonic. A java product which just runs and it runs well. The webinterface desperately needs a good UIoverall but it works and it doesn't get in the way. I use ampache, but you are absolutely correct: it is fiddly, and breaks easy. Subsonic also does "just work". I personally like ampache because it's much less resource-intensive on my webserver, and easier to fiddle with (I'm also a java-hater), but Subsonic is much more approachable.

jeena 11y ago

What doesn't work well with XMPP is history on all my devices. I want to use it on my work computer, then when it's time to go I'd like to change to my phone on the way to the train station, then on the train I'd like to keep on chatting on my laptop and when I'm home I'd like to end the discussion on my iMac. I still want to be able to scroll up and to read what I or anyone else in that chat room said before. This seems to be a feature where XAMPP and IRC fail me.