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What you've described is not at all an equivalent for Dropbox. There are many, many features that your stack doesn't support.
by turtledove 4y ago
What you've described is not at all an equivalent for Dropbox. There are many, many features that your stack doesn't support.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Msw242 4y agoHow valuable are those features after Dropbox deletes all of your data and deactivates your account?
- shkkmo 4y agoWhy can't your VPS provider do the same thing?
- dingleberry420 4y agoThey typically don't spy on their customers as much as a service like dropbox does. Before downvoting, ask yourself: When was the last time a VPS provider scanned the disk contents of their customers? And when was the last time they booted someone for using full disk encryption? Meanwhile, dropbox proudly proclaims how they scan the contents of their users' files.
- filmgirlcw 4y agoEdit: you substantially changed your comment after complaining about downvotes. That’s not cool. Note that you edited it. VPS companies delete customer data for all kinds of reasons, just as arbitrarily as Dropbox. I’ve had VPSes at dozens and dozens of places over the years. I’ve seen them accidentally delete servers, purposefully disable stuff for what they claimed were hacked sites that weren’t actually hacked (so that’s scanning right there), I’ve seen them go out of business because the owner was 15 years old, I’ve seen them go out of business because they sold to Endurance or whoever, I’ve seen their data centers catch on fire — taking everyone’s data with it, I’ve seen them accidentally delete whole clusters. And I excuse it in most of those cases because it is a VPS I pay a pittance for and don’t run production on, but the risk is always there. Trusting your data to Dropbox or OneDrive makes a lot more logical sense, especially if you aren’t knowingly violating any of their rules. And yes, you can colocate. I’ve done that too. But I no longer have the energy to do that, especially if my box is in a data center I can’t physically access. I backup about 5 different places because I’m always afraid of someone fucking me over. But for Dropbox to do this, is truly terrible. Especially for an unlisted rule.
- Msw242 4y agoDropbox has invested in infrastructure to do things like index and search the contents of your files. VPS provider doesn't even necessarily have read access to your data, and because you aren't relying on them for search/index features, encryption is much less expensive from a functionality standpoint.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThose features are worthless if you’re entire digital storage can evaporate without any recourse.
- turtledove 4y agoWhich definitely won't happen with a cheap VPS provider. /s
- toomuchtodo 4y agoDefinitely not happening with my Synology NAS unless I rage quit and throw it out a window (and it backs up to Backblaze B2). It is unfortunately more of a time commitment then paying for Dropbox (which I previously did, for years), but I won’t lose all my data because of them finding something to complain about with a hash of one of my files (or however they’re scanning content) and nuking my account. That’s simply not an option.
- voisin 4y agoI think OP is being sarcastic, referring to a comment on the original Show HN for Dropbox.
- psyc 4y agoThat’s how I took it as well.
- turtledove 4y ago
- chimprich 4y agoThis one I think: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- TameAntelope 4y ago
- turtledove 4y ago
- TameAntelope 4y ago
- turtledove 4y agoSorry, "would be super useful" be "would have helped me". Maybe those have different meanings to you? They mean more or less the same to me?
- TameAntelope 4y agoOne is an objective statement of the world, the other is a subjective statement about you personally. If these things mean the same to you, you're not parsing the English correctly, which points to a larger comprehension issue that further explains why you didn't get the original sarcasm.
- blueflow 4y agoLike "getting deleted for circumstances you cannot control?". This is so much of an anti-feature that SFTP suddenly looks like an attractive option.
- IceWreck 4y agoSeriously, SFTP + Syncthing + Filebrowser completely replaces Dropbox for me. Name one feature thats not present in this stack.
- tgv 4y agoRegular marketing emails.
- turtledove 4y agoI can install drop box in under ten minutes. I don't have to manage security patches for all the binaries in the stack. My data is available in network edge locations close to me or the people I share it with. I can turn dollars into more storage very easily. I don't have to configure user permissions and groups in more than one place. Also, what you described is not "sftp + cvs + vps" ;D
- rkagerer 4y agoCan you right-click a large file (in your day-to-day file manager), hit Copy Link, and email the link to someone so they can download it (without having to give them any further credentials)?
- IceWreck 4y agoYeah why not. Thats why I mentioned filebrowser.
- deckard1 4y agoSyncthing makes Dropbox look downright barbarian. Especially if you combine Syncthing with Android and a NAS or home server. iOS is... not really capable of sync outside Apple ecosystem. And this is true even with Dropbox. Not an Android fanboy. Just stating the fact. I take a picture on my Android phone and I don't have to think about it. It's now on my home server, it's encrypted, it's automatically backed up, etc. I have an app that takes a backup of my phone and puts it in a single file. Literally I press a button and my entire phone is backed up via syncthing. I use KeePass. My passwords are in sync at all times, on every device. There is also KDE Connect, which I have yet to try out. Even before Syncthing, Unison existed since 1995. Which was the true free software version of Dropbox. You never needed a bunch of hacks to get automatic sync working on Linux. Syncthing is a bit easier to configure, IMO.
- dingleberry420 4y agoSyncthing?
- teekert 4y agohttps://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ Ddg is your friend you know.
- dingleberry420 4y agoI am aware what it is. I am suggesting it as a dropbox equivalent.
- teekert 4y agoAh, wrongly interpreted :) By the time I got there was so much syncthing in the thread I thought you asked about it.
- NortySpock 4y agoSuch as? Syncthing + NextCloud + rsnapshot backups would have been my open-source alternative recommendation, but of course not everyone wants to take the time to learn that skillet, set that up, and maintain it.
- jerf 4y agoWhat does Syncthing add to the Nextcloud capabilities? (Honest question because I'm curious; I have a NextCloud & snapshot to encrypted S3 backup solution already.)
- NortySpock 4y agoI admit I have not used NextCloud, but the hands-off automatic file-sync-between-devices that Syncthing provides has been transparent and seamless. It has required no babysitting after initial set up. I have forgotten if NextCloud does this, because I don't use NextCloud at this time, nor have I.
- turtledove 4y agoAre those features of sftp? It cvs? Or the vps provider? Or are you saying, "well, with a completely different stack I can get closer to feature parity"?
- bayindirh 4y agoYou can get the whole package from Hetzner pre-configured, or just configure it yourself. I manage our team's nextcloud installation, and installing on bare-metal (sans containers) is a half day job at most. Moreover Nextcloud supports WebDav which allows tools like Zotero to directly tap into that.
- turtledove 4y agoWould you say that the install and maintenance load for both systems (Dropbox vs packages containers) is the same? Like, I'm confident my tech illiterate parents could get drop box running. Ease of use and UX are features. I'm not saying the self hosted stack is bad, and in fact it's probably better in many ways. But it doesn't have the same feature set if you consider usability a feature, imo.
- survirtual 4y agoAs someone who recently migrated off of Dropbox, you can get most of the features with open source systems like Syncthing and a self hosted server. The main complication to implement is encryption at rest for the data (I use luks2 on a hd and the fs of a raspi controller) and secure remote access (wireguard works really well and is easy to manage). I wireguard into my remote systems and have Syncthing configured only to local network (no relays etc). It works beautifully; not missing dropbox at all. I am still working out a viable alternative for things like document scanning, but I have no regrets owning my data.
- teekert 4y agoOk, then docker compose some Nextcloud on it, that’ll be some 20 lines? Add some more for Treafik for the let’s encrypt certs.
- turtledove 4y agoAsking a non technical person to run and maintain docker containers is absurd.
- teekert 4y agoOP suggested SFTP, CVS and a $5 VPS. I'm suggesting a 30 line yaml file and the occasional `docker-compose pull && docker-compose up -d`.