this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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I tried Nextcloud a while back and was not impressed - I had issues withe the speed of the Windows sync that were determined to be "normal" with no roadmap to getting fixed. I'm now planning to move off Windows desktop so that won't be an issue - so I thought I'd try again.

I went to nextcloud.com, clicked on Download-> Nextcloud server -> All-in-one -> Docker image - Setup AIO. This took me to the github README at Docker section. I'm already running docker for other things so I read the instructions, setup a new filesystem for my data directory and ran the suggested docker command with an appropriate "--env NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR=". I'm then left with a terminal running docker in the foreground - not a great way to run a background server but ok, I've been around for a while and can figure out how to make it autostart in the background ongoing. So I move on to the next step - open my browser at the appropriate URL and I'm presented with a simple page asking me to "Log in using your Nextcloud AIO passphrase:". I don't have a Nextcloud AIO passphrase and nothing I've read so far has mentioned it. When I search for it I get some results on how to reset it, but not much help. I could probably figure that out too, but after reading some more I found that Nextcloud requires a public hostname and can't work with a local name or IP address. I'm already running my home LAN with OpenVPN and access it from anywhere as "local" - I don't really want to create a new path into my home network just for Nextcloud.

I'm sorry - I know this sounds like a disgruntled rant and I guess it is. I just want to check that I'm not missing obvious things before I give up again. All I want is a simple file sync setup like onedrive but without the microsoft.

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[–] JASN_DE@feddit.org 10 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

AIO

Yeah, that one is basically a take-it-or-leave-it approach. It's a lot easier to customize when running your own Docker stack. It grew over the years and the team tries to sell it as an all-in-one SharePoint replacement (which it can be), but that also means it turned into an even more convoluted system.

I was looking into alternatives earlier this year, maybe one of them could be a solution for you:

  • Owncloud infinite scale
  • opencloud.eu (fork of ocis)
  • syncthing (very good, depending on what exactly you're looking for)
  • Pydio Cells

There are others, or servers like WebDAV itself.

Some notes:

  • syncthing - a little complex, and the file format isn't flat files, but they have a FUSE driver you can use if you want "flat" files; it's wicked fast at syncing data
  • OCIS/OpenCloud - default file format isn't flat, but there is an experimental POSIX driver to get that flat file layout, in case you prefer that for backups
  • Pydio - don't know much about it, but it seems designed for large, clustered deployments

I'm playing with OCIS/OpenCloud and it seems like a good fit. I'm mostly holding off until I can figure out which to use (leaning toward OpenCloud).