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My experience with Nextcloud was underwhelming. Regular crashes, very slow sync if you have thousands of files, full reupload on any change and ignored files th

by neamar 4y ago

My experience with Nextcloud was underwhelming. Regular crashes, very slow sync if you have thousands of files, full reupload on any change and ignored files that do not get synced with no warnings. I had made five accounts for my family and each of them got a separate blocking bug. The worst part was the syncing of shared folders. I ended up using Seafile, which is mostly open source and has beek rock solid for the past two years. I'm not looking back!

preya2k 4y ago
This! He says OneDrive is buggy, but that’s nothing compared to Nextcloud. He’s in for a big disappointment. Seafile is a much better choice if you’re only looking for FileSync (without the whole App Store thing). Another new and already better and faster contender: ownCloud OCIS, which is a complete Go rewrite of ownCloud and is already very fast and efficient and works like a charm for file sharing.
- piaste 4y ago
  One thing that made me shy away from Seafile was the limitations of its Android client. IIRC it could only upload photos, not sync folders. So couldn't use it for notes, voice recordings, downloads, books... I considered Syncthing as well, but I wanted both the arbitrary file sync and the web-based features. Figured I'd rather deal with Nextcloud's poor performance than cobble together a crappy Nextcloud clone via three separate apps. I'm definitely keeping an eye out for OCIS though.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    Pretty much exactly the same position. I use NC for file-syncing, WebDAV, and the webinterface for those files only, but it’s not exactly great. But for similar reasons as you, it’s still the solution I’m stuck with for now.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Syncthing works well for me (I use it also on Android to sync photos and notes) but yeah, if you want web access that's not the right tool for the job
- MikusR 4y ago
  If you are looking for sync only there is Syncthing
bayindirh 4y ago
As a sysadmin managing Nextcloud on an on premise VPS, we have none of the problems you mentioned. We have 20+ accounts, tons of shared files, and whatnot. Just upgraded to Nextcloud 25 (literally 20 minutes ago), and no problems whatsoever. I deployed it on a virtualized server which is not extremely powerful, and everybody seems to enjoy the productivity boost it brought into the team.
- nix23 4y ago
  I upgraded to Nexcloud25 and all Gui Customization's are gone...once again. I don't really like the php-nextcloud, using it for well over 4 years there is always something not right. I really hope the go-version is better.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Isn't the go version limited to owncloud? Are they open sourcing the new code base?
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      Looks like NextCloud is also thinking about migrating to Go.
- ilyt 4y ago
  We have 150+ and had a bunch of problems, users with weirdly long file/dir names having some problems, and sync very rarely being flaky. The performance is underwhelming (it's PHP after all) but we just threw CPU power at the problem...
  - sdze 4y ago
    snark remark... Has nothing to do with PHP but more with the implementation.
    - krageon 4y ago
tomaskafka 4y ago
+1 here. Nextcloud is a pile of PHP scripts, while Seafile splits and diffs individual file blocks, and absolutely flies at 'whatever the lower of of your network and drive speed is', handling any file sizes you can throw at it. On the other hand, Seafile is also a binary distributed by Chinese team, and if I was a Chinese secret service, I'd build in all the backdoors I can, which I guess already happened.
- stareatgoats 4y ago
  Their documentation says they can provide end2end encryption, but the docs also seems to contain a number of caveats that a security professional might find problematic - or not (IANASP): https://manual.seafile.com/security/security_features/#how-does-seafile-store-user-login-password https://manual.seafile.com/security/security_features/#how-d...
  - krageon 4y ago
    It's not weak as such, but there are gotchas in this faq (mostly related to metadata and key file caching) that effectively mean a casual user won't have end to end encryption. That said, I do not know of a cloud provider that does this well. You could just as easily build on top of this service with rclone (and the crypt backend) as any other. Then it is probably fine, but then you are already not a casual user. I will say that in the west it is probably better to have your personal life invaded (which for a casual user is the reality you must face. It will happen) by China than the US (broadly your choices due to prism), as they are less likely to have an impact on your day-to-day functioning.
- JadoJodo 4y ago
  > On the other hand, Seafile is also a binary distributed by Chinese team, and if I was a Chinese secret service, I'd build in all the backdoors I can This was the reason I tried and subsequently passed on Seafile. It’s one thing if it’s just my stuff, but I was setting it up as a syncing server for friends and family. I just wasn’t comfortable with this prospect and being responsible for others’ files, as well.
- 4y ago
Gigachad 4y ago
As polished as the UI looks. You can’t cover up the fact it’s a PHP turd under the hood.
- sdze 4y ago
  Would it run better if it was a "Python turd" under the hood?
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Likely, although that’s not ideal either. Would want to see it in something performant like Go or Rust.
kelnos 4y ago
Surprising that your and the OP's experiences are so different. Based on the description, I think it's safe to assume the OP also has thousands of files, some of them very large. I wonder if the issue is with Nextcloud itself, or with the particular hosting provider.

by neamar 4y ago

preya2k 4y ago

This! He says OneDrive is buggy, but that’s nothing compared to Nextcloud. He’s in for a big disappointment. Seafile is a much better choice if you’re only looking for FileSync (without the whole App Store thing). Another new and already better and faster contender: ownCloud OCIS, which is a complete Go rewrite of ownCloud and is already very fast and efficient and works like a charm for file sharing.

piaste 4y ago
One thing that made me shy away from Seafile was the limitations of its Android client. IIRC it could only upload photos, not sync folders. So couldn't use it for notes, voice recordings, downloads, books... I considered Syncthing as well, but I wanted both the arbitrary file sync and the web-based features. Figured I'd rather deal with Nextcloud's poor performance than cobble together a crappy Nextcloud clone via three separate apps. I'm definitely keeping an eye out for OCIS though.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Pretty much exactly the same position. I use NC for file-syncing, WebDAV, and the webinterface for those files only, but it’s not exactly great. But for similar reasons as you, it’s still the solution I’m stuck with for now.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Syncthing works well for me (I use it also on Android to sync photos and notes) but yeah, if you want web access that's not the right tool for the job
MikusR 4y ago
If you are looking for sync only there is Syncthing

bayindirh 4y ago

As a sysadmin managing Nextcloud on an on premise VPS, we have none of the problems you mentioned. We have 20+ accounts, tons of shared files, and whatnot. Just upgraded to Nextcloud 25 (literally 20 minutes ago), and no problems whatsoever. I deployed it on a virtualized server which is not extremely powerful, and everybody seems to enjoy the productivity boost it brought into the team.

nix23 4y ago
I upgraded to Nexcloud25 and all Gui Customization's are gone...once again. I don't really like the php-nextcloud, using it for well over 4 years there is always something not right. I really hope the go-version is better.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Isn't the go version limited to owncloud? Are they open sourcing the new code base?
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    Looks like NextCloud is also thinking about migrating to Go.
ilyt 4y ago
We have 150+ and had a bunch of problems, users with weirdly long file/dir names having some problems, and sync very rarely being flaky. The performance is underwhelming (it's PHP after all) but we just threw CPU power at the problem...
- sdze 4y ago
  snark remark... Has nothing to do with PHP but more with the implementation.
  - krageon 4y ago

tomaskafka 4y ago

+1 here. Nextcloud is a pile of PHP scripts, while Seafile splits and diffs individual file blocks, and absolutely flies at 'whatever the lower of of your network and drive speed is', handling any file sizes you can throw at it. On the other hand, Seafile is also a binary distributed by Chinese team, and if I was a Chinese secret service, I'd build in all the backdoors I can, which I guess already happened.

stareatgoats 4y ago
Their documentation says they can provide end2end encryption, but the docs also seems to contain a number of caveats that a security professional might find problematic - or not (IANASP): https://manual.seafile.com/security/security_features/#how-does-seafile-store-user-login-password https://manual.seafile.com/security/security_features/#how-d...
- krageon 4y ago
  It's not weak as such, but there are gotchas in this faq (mostly related to metadata and key file caching) that effectively mean a casual user won't have end to end encryption. That said, I do not know of a cloud provider that does this well. You could just as easily build on top of this service with rclone (and the crypt backend) as any other. Then it is probably fine, but then you are already not a casual user. I will say that in the west it is probably better to have your personal life invaded (which for a casual user is the reality you must face. It will happen) by China than the US (broadly your choices due to prism), as they are less likely to have an impact on your day-to-day functioning.
JadoJodo 4y ago
> On the other hand, Seafile is also a binary distributed by Chinese team, and if I was a Chinese secret service, I'd build in all the backdoors I can This was the reason I tried and subsequently passed on Seafile. It’s one thing if it’s just my stuff, but I was setting it up as a syncing server for friends and family. I just wasn’t comfortable with this prospect and being responsible for others’ files, as well.
4y ago

Gigachad 4y ago

As polished as the UI looks. You can’t cover up the fact it’s a PHP turd under the hood.

sdze 4y ago
Would it run better if it was a "Python turd" under the hood?
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Likely, although that’s not ideal either. Would want to see it in something performant like Go or Rust.

kelnos 4y ago

Surprising that your and the OP's experiences are so different. Based on the description, I think it's safe to assume the OP also has thousands of files, some of them very large. I wonder if the issue is with Nextcloud itself, or with the particular hosting provider.