this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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Nextcloud Hub 8 is now available (nextcloud.com)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 51 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Honestly, I'm not really excited about the past couple of major Nextcloud releases.

Mainly because there's still one big issue for small-scale Nextcloud servers: performance.

Mainly the web UI is still too slow for me to properly use, which is why I don't use it at all (unless I have to update an app).

It's a bit disappointing that they're mainly focused on the large enterprise customers instead of small hobbyists like me, but it's still understandable; after all, their income is mainly from the enterprise customers, not from selfhosters.

I also don't really like how they've jumped on the AI hypetrain instead of improving performance. But once again, I guess this generates more income for them than focusing on other things like improving performance.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Agreed. Nextcloud keeps turning itself in hype mode 😑 Remember their social app and "Nextcloud joins the Fediverse!". I think they even made that social app a recommended app for some time while it was barely usable. Not sure what the current state of the app is but I hear nothing about it I guess cause : new hypes!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Performance is why I stopped using it and replaced it with Radicale for card- and CalDAV and Syncthing for filesyncing. Couldn't be happier with the results.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Syncthing is fantastic. Loving it so far.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Also the state of encryption is abysmal. It seems to be constantly experimental/beta. I vaguely remember them talking about launching E2EE at like nextcloud versions 16 or something, but it seems flaky even still :/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

There's also compatibility mismatch between certain versions of clients and servers. That almost cost me a bunch of files. Thank RMS I had a local copy through syncthing.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Every fucking Nextcloud post is covered with people shitting on this opensource project that is hugely popular and works well for a lot of use cases.

If you don't like and can't get it working right, then don't use it. But maybe keep your bitching to yourselves so the rest of us can discuss it.

[–] BlueBockser 9 points 7 months ago

I wouldn't call criticism of their strategic focus "shitting on" Nextcloud. It obviously still does a lot of things right or at least right enough to be useful and relevant to many people, or else we wouldn't be discussing it. But it has its issues and many of them have been unadressed for a long time, so why shouldn't people voice their displeasure with that?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't help that every nextcloud official announcement promises the moon while delivering not even stardust.

Example: this blog post from two years ago: https://nextcloud.com/blog/plan-your-next-trip-with-nextcloud-maps-new-features/

None of the features written in that post are available, even today

It's something that it might be coming in a decade if someone is inspired by the mockups and codes it. When you install the maps plugin it shows a map of the world, and that's it.

If they need to announce a concept that only exists as a mockup, either publish the news on April 1st or write "concept of how maps might integrate with nextcloud 50"

[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well, every project ends up finding things that aren't as easy as they may have thought, or chooses after the fact to devote the time to other things. I could cherry pick decade old features from every long-lived project, like KDE or Gnome and say that makes them worthless. They patently aren't worthless, and anyone that wants to criticize is welcome to file a bug and follow through on the fix. Most bugs don't get fixed because people won't follow up.

I'm happy with where they've gone overall, it fits a lot of my needs that I'd have to use something like Google or Microsoft instead, so it's annoying as shit to see every person that can't be arsed to put in the time to get it working properly for the things it does well to shit on it every. goddamn. time. it's. name. shows. up gets on my last nerve.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm using nextcloud and I like it (also I don't see all this slowness even if I run it on a core i3 8100) but it's the general stance from the devs

Everything it's announced like it's ready to the public when it's just a proof of concept (not even alpha)

Another example is the mail plugin. It's an unusable early alpha yet on the blog there are three posts starting from four years ago talking about inexistent features https://nextcloud.com/?s=Mail&wpessid=1612

Same for the forms plugin. Early alpha that doesn't have an essential feature like emailing responses to specific addresses (it sends notifications via nextcloud). Again the blog talks 4 years ago like it's ready for everyone.

Or the Trello clone. Many problems like it "ruins" the tasks sync by creating read-only tasks that get synced via caldav.

Or nextcloud photos, big post in 2022 but it's very barebone

Or docs, so many posts yet it has so many problems.

Or the desktop client, where builds are pushed to regular users without testing the installer script (forced reboots without confirmation, crashing explorer.exe instead of asking a graceful restart)

The only NC plugin that I'm using without problems and that I feel it passed the beta stage is Music and its subsonic compatible server. No blog posts about it. Maybe because it's hosted on owncloud GitHub repository

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

On the plugins, I couldn't say, I've not used those plugins. I do use ones like Gpoddersync, Recipes and Snappymail with no issues. I did try that Forms plugin and it was a bag of shit. Never had issues with the client, but I've only used it on Windows once, every other system its on is Linux, but it's been solid.

In the Docker All-in-One, the Collabra Suite integration is flawless and I have several people using it on my server. Performance is snappy, especially with a few recent updates. I highly recommend the AIO, after having used NC in baremetal, NextcloudPi, Docker, it's the least maintenance and best update experience by far.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Nobody is stopping you from discussing it. So far your only contribution to the discussion was bitching about others bitching.

If we limit the discussion to the selfhosted realm, I agree with these people bitching. Nextcloud is too bloated and slow, while not providing many benefits over individual services. You would at least expect it feature ease of use over having individual apps but nope because when you install an update, there is high chance of breakage. End to end encryption has been losing people files for years. Which is imo a big deal in "private cloud".

I guess my point is that the "bitching" is our discussion and you and people who upvoted your comment are free to join it and perhaps provide some examples of your Nextcloud setup and why you think it's good. I'm sure most of us will be nice and won't tell you to keep your comments to yourself.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I am driving away from nextcloud more and more. I would be back when they get rid of php and really develop even one plugin (the so called "apps") which isn't just an alpha version.

I don't see any use case for this bloated all in one monster with crap performance. Someone needs his files in a browser and overall synced. Use syncthing and something like filebrowser or filestash. Photos? Immich. Documents? Paperless. Music, Movies, e-books? Jellyfin. Collaborative Docs? Onlyoffice, cryptpad. Notes? Joplin, trillium. etc.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Bloat and bad performance aside, you don't see a benefit in having a all-in-one solution that in a way acts as a drop in replacement for people wanting to switch away from the likes of Google/Apple? I certainly do.

Yes, having a dedicated app selected for each use case will likely give better results. But it also means more management. And many users don't actually need more than basic functionality.

But yes looking at the complaints, they should look at polishing existing features first.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I know about the successful help being an alternative to apple/google. When I start degoogling (5 years ago) nextcloud was impressive. But I talk about my own experience. And nextcloud doesn't work on their basics. Instead they're following every hype with an alpha app which doesn't get support when the hype ends (nextcloud social) for example.

Maybe they could fork owncloud again? Owncloud worked over years to get rid of php and released last year "infinity scale" its a single binary. You can run it nearly out of the box. And it is stable and fast. Nextcloud needs this, too.

The php part is something a newbie wouldn't easy success with. The alternatives I recommend are all easy to install docker containers, which are simple to maintain and no worries about the next release could break everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

A newbie should be running AIO in docker, which in my experience, has been pretty solid.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yuuuup. I really don't understand why it's so popular. It's bloated and overly complex. I've tried running an instance twice in the past few years, and both times I gave up within a week.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

It did took me a week ,but I'm running one for 4years on a raspberry pi 4, it works good enough to share files and sync contacts and calendar.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

It's popular because people want this to be real, but it's just a promise. The actual thing can't run without crapping it's pants. Even if you manage to run it fine, there will be an update that will break everything.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Blames PHP for all the issues

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I like Nextcloud very much but this release (and the one before it) are really enterprise focused for which I don't have a use case...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

But there customers do

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

This new release does seem to solve some long standing issues people have had with nextcloud for a while. Like great performance improvements and Federated Chat with Nextcloud Talk.

And improving Circles and renaming it to Teams seems like it's only gonna be really useful for Businesses. But I do hope that some smaller organizations can get some use out of it.

All in all, I think this release is great, if what they said in the announcement is true. I don't care much for all the AI additions, but I understand why they are doing it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (6 children)

I just cannot find a use case for Nextcloud. I have gone as far as installing it and sync'ing it with my LDAP for user auth and sync pictures from my phone to my NAS. All the other features are just a big ole m'eh for me.

This has just been my experience, so maybe I'm missing something that would just make it all click and make me not live without it. So far though, I've spun up and spun down an instance 3 times and never missed it afterwards.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

By now it is widely used in my family as backup for our smartphone photos and important documents on PCs. In addition we use it for our calendars, contacts, notes and passwords.

I'm also investigating whether it's useful to track recipes for the food we normally eat to help manage our usual "what should we eat today" and "what groceries should we buy this week" questions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

For recipe tracking and "what to buy" I've actually had good success with https://grocy.info/

Has really cut down on buying things to use only to get home and find out I already had half of it and forgot

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I like it as basically a self-hosted Dropbox/GDrive for syncing and sharing. I would love for them to focus more on that (performance especially, as others have noted) instead of all the other crap they keep trying to jam into it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I use it to manage my documents, backup my photos from my phone to my server and access all my files from any other device. Basically Nextcloud is my replacement for OneDrive.

Additionally, I have used it in the past to collaborate on various group projects which require documents. For example, I had to make a presentation with some other people and I could create a PowerPoint in Nextcloud, send a share link to others and then we could edit the PowerPoint in realtime with Nextcloud + Collabora, which is pretty cool. It's the only FOSS alternative (at least as far as I'm aware of) that can compete with Microsoft 365 / Google Workspaces.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Came here to say the same. The integration with Collabora is wonderful. I used FileRun and FileBrowser with OnlyOffice in the past, and the experience was totally different (a part that OnlyOffice messes with Excel/Spreadsheets pivot tables, or at least one year ago, making it impossible for people to work with them). I understand the hate, but currently, at least for me, is the closest experience to O365 .

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

I use it to sync all my photoshop projects and documents from my different machines to my server and to have access to those files from my phone , it's the first thing I install when I do a fresh install of my os since everything I use is there

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I used it mostly for calendar and adressbok synchronization between devices bit the performance was so bad O had to replace it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What did you replace it with? In my case I love my Nextcloud because I have my calendar, adress book, tasks, notes, RSS feed, etc. all in one app but I'm interested to hear alternatives to it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Thank you, I'll try them out when I find the time :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Could you expand a bit more on the LDAP part? I'm thinking of rolling something like that myself but not sure if it's worth it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I tried a couple of LDAP solutions out there; Windows Server AD, Open LDAP, Samba4 in Debian, TurnKey Solutions LDAP before finally settling on Zentyal. It has a nice to use web GUI and can work in conjunction with AD RSAT tools that I have installed in a throwaway Windows VM for when I need more granular controls the web GUI can't do.

All my Debian VM's and laptops connect to Zentyal AD via SSSD.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

And how many users are in your ldap config?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Two users and a handful of service accounts. I use it so I have a centralized user authentication system instead of managing multiple individual user accounts.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It really is so slow it's not study worth using unfortunately.

Syncthing and some nice caldav and you're mostly good.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

While I do love Syncthing, it solves a different set of requirements.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

It works fine for me

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I used nextcloud for many years. I failed to see significant improvements overall and it has always been slow and clunky.

I have replaced with radicale, a WebDAV server, syncthing and little more.

Over the years I tried lots of plugins and never settled with any, always too barebone or mild.

Still an amazing tool, if it fits your use case.