Doesn't mention Syncthing. Not self hosted but open source and peer to peer. I use it and of works great. There are also others that meet their requirements and they haven't mentioned, like Box,...
Doesn't mention Syncthing. Not self hosted but open source and peer to peer. I use it and of works great.
There are also others that meet their requirements and they haven't mentioned, like Box, Resilio and Mega.
I've tried syncthing before but the setup process was extremely painful for me and I never got it working the way I wanted it to. Maybe if I tried a little harder it'd be good but I ended up...
I've tried syncthing before but the setup process was extremely painful for me and I never got it working the way I wanted it to. Maybe if I tried a little harder it'd be good but I ended up selfhosting nextcloud instead which has been very solid and I love having webdav so I can write integrations and whatnot.
Setup process can be alien for first time, but its only required once. And it is easy and minimal after that, as it goes. Speaking with couple of years of experience. Hell, I have couple of...
Setup process can be alien for first time, but its only required once. And it is easy and minimal after that, as it goes. Speaking with couple of years of experience.
Hell, I have couple of folders shared with friends where we regularly drop stuff for each other. Kinda like digital postbox, all private and p2p. Mostly because setting up and maintaining nextcloud isn't feasible for either of us ATM.
I think syncthing does not tick all boxes, it depends on the use case. It's peer to peer without a central server unless you set one up which is running 24/7, but you need to maintain it. It's not...
I think syncthing does not tick all boxes, it depends on the use case. It's peer to peer without a central server unless you set one up which is running 24/7, but you need to maintain it. It's not a service you can just sign-up for and use on all your devices. There's no syncthing client for mobile unless you build something yourself.
I really do like syncthing but it's not the it just works experience without doing anything.
There is a syncthing mobile client on android. It does however have trouble syncing folders on external SD cards due to restrictions in newer version of android due to Google not adding...
There is a syncthing mobile client on android. It does however have trouble syncing folders on external SD cards due to restrictions in newer version of android due to Google not adding DocumentProvider support in Go. I worked around it with the external sd access enabler magisk module though. Works perfectly for syncing my ~100gb music library.
Syncthing is cool. I found it incredibly helpful for a game copying system I was trying to do across computers. I would place it firmly in "self-hosted." It's not a server/client, cloud/local...
Syncthing is cool. I found it incredibly helpful for a game copying system I was trying to do across computers.
I would place it firmly in "self-hosted." It's not a server/client, cloud/local system as much as converting every device into a droplet, but the initial fiddling may be too much for the "just works" crowd, especially if you consider the lack of an official frontend for it.
The article says it's excluding self-hosted solutions because "I don’t want to do any maintenance work on servers". Syncthing requires no maintenance or fees. The first time setting it up was a...
The article says it's excluding self-hosted solutions because "I don’t want to do any maintenance work on servers". Syncthing requires no maintenance or fees. The first time setting it up was a bit complex, but since then it has just worked between my phone and computer.
Lacking an official front end? On Android it has one. On Mac it has an official app (which launches the web frontend) and unofficial apps do the same on other platforms.
Can you please point me to it? I am using KDE and using syncthing-tray. It is very good, with couple of niggles, but I like it. I am not aware of integration with MacOS and Gnome.
Can you please point me to it? I am using KDE and using syncthing-tray. It is very good, with couple of niggles, but I like it. I am not aware of integration with MacOS and Gnome.
Interesting. Launhpad shows only libc as dependency, is there any way to see what are the recommended packages? I do not have Ubuntu so cannot check. Otherwise I must have missed something in...
Interesting. Launhpad shows only libc as dependency, is there any way to see what are the recommended packages? I do not have Ubuntu so cannot check.
Otherwise I must have missed something in Syncthing updates.
Official frontend is the web view. Which is a bit much for "just works" crowd, agreed. But by god is it nothing short of magic. For years I searched for something that will prefer local network...
Official frontend is the web view. Which is a bit much for "just works" crowd, agreed. But by god is it nothing short of magic.
For years I searched for something that will prefer local network for sync whenever available, but will work over internet regardless. With terrible ISPs and tiny mobile data, syncing multi-dozen GB of photos and music and other shit is just not an option. Backups in my country are pretty much disparate thumb drives and external HDDs due to cost/availability of network.
Can relate. I've went through a bit of a journey with file syncing. I thought I don't really need more than a few gigabytes, so it was tempting to stick with free services at first. For a while, I...
Can relate. I've went through a bit of a journey with file syncing.
I thought I don't really need more than a few gigabytes, so it was tempting to stick with free services at first.
For a while, I had Google Drive but, you know, it's Google. It also seemed to struggle with large amounts of files being added. They used to throw gigabytes at you for any occasion, I now have like 19GB in the free plan. I made the decision to ditch Google Drive a while ago, though. It now says I use 7GB for my email archive, which consists of a few thousand text files and a few hundred attachments, which are about 1MB on average (I did some search for file size there's only a handful of attachments over 2MB), no idea how on earth it eats up 7GB. Gmail is the last thread that binds me to the Google empire and it's starting to get annoying.
I still have the $1 for 50GB option of iCloud. Worth it to not have to mess with anything else on my iPhone.
For a while, I used a new service that offered generous 25GB to newcomers for life. I don't remember the name. It was something hard to search online like just "Sync"? They lasted about 3 years before shifting their business model or going bankrupt or something. Lesson learned.
In the end, I bought Dropbox Plus and never looked back. It's freeing to not have to worry about file sizes anymore, it's 2TB, twice my laptop's hard disk. Syncing works flawlessly in the background, even crazy stuff. I had to use their versioning feature once to recover a file I've accidentally overwritten, a life saver. They're trying to expand their business with weird features and app updates that are getting a bit bloaty but syncing still works and seems to be their priority so that's good.
So, ultimately, you don't want to mess with what is essentially your backup solution. That's worth a lot. Dropbox has been in this game for long enough to have that calmness, that level of expertise that allows you to stop worrying. Easily worth it.
Syncing data between a bunch of different devices kinda sucks atm. My Uni's Google Drive is great because it's unlimited in size, but it's really slow and takes forever to upload stuff to, and...
Syncing data between a bunch of different devices kinda sucks atm. My Uni's Google Drive is great because it's unlimited in size, but it's really slow and takes forever to upload stuff to, and it's difficult to access since clients are few and all (including Google's) are pretty terrible. DropBox is a lot better, but it's pretty expensive for the space you get. Bitorrent Sync is awesome once it gets working, but it's cumbersome everytime you want to add a different folder and you need to have the space on every device to hold your data, which isn't ideal when it comes to 250+GB music collections for instance.
The best solution I've found so far, as silly as it seems, is is simply running an FTP server with basic authentication on my workstation with its own 4TB HDD. On my local network, the lack of secure authentication is fine since it's shielded from the internet, and it has a ton of advantages. It's super fast because of how simple the protocol is, clients for it exist on pretty much every device and it can often be really well integrated (by mounting it as a folder natively for instance), and it's trivial to allow other people access to it as well, since I just need to give them their own account and folder permissions. Once I figure out how to VPN into my system from the outside, I'll be able to access it from anywhere, and I can use some encrypted ZIP backups of it every now and then to my Google Drive folder for a poor man's backup solution.
I don't want to type in fdkjgflfjdkhgk.jpg to send a file, I'd rather just select it or drag it. Plus there's no way you'd get any tech illiterate to use this.
I don't want to type in fdkjgflfjdkhgk.jpg to send a file, I'd rather just select it or drag it. Plus there's no way you'd get any tech illiterate to use this.
Click through to the hackernews post originally announcing Dropbox. My god, its so good. Yeah really Dropbox, you don't seem "viral" or "income-generating" and people can build this trivially with...
For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.
It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
Yeah really Dropbox, you don't seem "viral" or "income-generating" and people can build this trivially with FTP and curlftpfs on linux. Going nowhere.
Except, it’s a feature that tons of users want and are willing to pay for. I’m not sure about how well Dropbox’s financials are, but they haven’t had to get acquired/acqui-hired yet. Though, they...
Except, it’s a feature that tons of users want and are willing to pay for. I’m not sure about how well Dropbox’s financials are, but they haven’t had to get acquired/acqui-hired yet. Though, they have had to raise the price, which isn’t a good sign. Personally, Dropbox is great and I’m happy to pay for it. Like the author, I’ve been bitten too many times by GDrive and iCloud such that I don’t trust them. Even if they work for most people most of the time, I don’t feel like I could rely on them the way I have come to just know that all my data in my Dropbox folder is always there on all my devices.
Tangential, but I use Grsync (graphical rsync) for "dumb" backups to an external hard drive. It works great with minimal setup. (Certainly not the use case of the author, but though I'd mention it)
Tangential, but I use Grsync (graphical rsync) for "dumb" backups to an external hard drive. It works great with minimal setup.
(Certainly not the use case of the author, but though I'd mention it)
They also leave out Seafile. It's much more reliable for me than Syncthing ever was (because it uses an always-available server, and accounts instead of pairwise associations, and isn't trying to...
They also leave out Seafile. It's much more reliable for me than Syncthing ever was (because it uses an always-available server, and accounts instead of pairwise associations, and isn't trying to traverse NAT and deal with netsplit-induced conflicts simultaneously). It has real applications for all the platforms, including a good Android solution that doesn't involve digging out Xposed or Magisk or whatever. And while it's available to host yourself, you can also buy hosting form several commercial providers.
I'm wondering how many files are scattered between individual devices and services and not being synced, especially things like Apple iCloud Photos, Google Photos and so on.
I'm wondering how many files are scattered between individual devices and services and not being synced, especially things like Apple iCloud Photos, Google Photos and so on.
Doesn't mention Syncthing. Not self hosted but open source and peer to peer. I use it and of works great.
There are also others that meet their requirements and they haven't mentioned, like Box, Resilio and Mega.
I use syncthing on all my devices and it fits my needs perfectly after a little bit of setup.
I've tried syncthing before but the setup process was extremely painful for me and I never got it working the way I wanted it to. Maybe if I tried a little harder it'd be good but I ended up selfhosting nextcloud instead which has been very solid and I love having webdav so I can write integrations and whatnot.
Setup process can be alien for first time, but its only required once. And it is easy and minimal after that, as it goes. Speaking with couple of years of experience.
Hell, I have couple of folders shared with friends where we regularly drop stuff for each other. Kinda like digital postbox, all private and p2p. Mostly because setting up and maintaining nextcloud isn't feasible for either of us ATM.
I think syncthing does not tick all boxes, it depends on the use case. It's peer to peer without a central server unless you set one up which is running 24/7, but you need to maintain it. It's not a service you can just sign-up for and use on all your devices. There's no syncthing client for mobile unless you build something yourself.
I really do like syncthing but it's not the it just works experience without doing anything.
There is a syncthing mobile client on android. It does however have trouble syncing folders on external SD cards due to restrictions in newer version of android due to Google not adding DocumentProvider support in Go. I worked around it with the external sd access enabler magisk module though. Works perfectly for syncing my ~100gb music library.
Syncthing is cool. I found it incredibly helpful for a game copying system I was trying to do across computers.
I would place it firmly in "self-hosted." It's not a server/client, cloud/local system as much as converting every device into a droplet, but the initial fiddling may be too much for the "just works" crowd, especially if you consider the lack of an official frontend for it.
The article says it's excluding self-hosted solutions because "I don’t want to do any maintenance work on servers". Syncthing requires no maintenance or fees. The first time setting it up was a bit complex, but since then it has just worked between my phone and computer.
Lacking an official front end? On Android it has one. On Mac it has an official app (which launches the web frontend) and unofficial apps do the same on other platforms.
For desktop, what it lacks is a convenient "integration" with DEs. Official desktop client is the web interfaces.
Can you please point me to it? I am using KDE and using syncthing-tray. It is very good, with couple of niggles, but I like it. I am not aware of integration with MacOS and Gnome.
Interesting. Launhpad shows only libc as dependency, is there any way to see what are the recommended packages? I do not have Ubuntu so cannot check.
Otherwise I must have missed something in Syncthing updates.
For mac, there is an official client https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-macos
I'm using NixOS, and install directly via package manager so maybe its a distro thing
Official frontend is the web view. Which is a bit much for "just works" crowd, agreed. But by god is it nothing short of magic.
For years I searched for something that will prefer local network for sync whenever available, but will work over internet regardless. With terrible ISPs and tiny mobile data, syncing multi-dozen GB of photos and music and other shit is just not an option. Backups in my country are pretty much disparate thumb drives and external HDDs due to cost/availability of network.
Syncthing finally brought me in 21st century.
Can relate. I've went through a bit of a journey with file syncing.
I thought I don't really need more than a few gigabytes, so it was tempting to stick with free services at first.
For a while, I had Google Drive but, you know, it's Google. It also seemed to struggle with large amounts of files being added. They used to throw gigabytes at you for any occasion, I now have like 19GB in the free plan. I made the decision to ditch Google Drive a while ago, though. It now says I use 7GB for my email archive, which consists of a few thousand text files and a few hundred attachments, which are about 1MB on average (I did some search for file size there's only a handful of attachments over 2MB), no idea how on earth it eats up 7GB. Gmail is the last thread that binds me to the Google empire and it's starting to get annoying.
I still have the $1 for 50GB option of iCloud. Worth it to not have to mess with anything else on my iPhone.
For a while, I used a new service that offered generous 25GB to newcomers for life. I don't remember the name. It was something hard to search online like just "Sync"? They lasted about 3 years before shifting their business model or going bankrupt or something. Lesson learned.
In the end, I bought Dropbox Plus and never looked back. It's freeing to not have to worry about file sizes anymore, it's 2TB, twice my laptop's hard disk. Syncing works flawlessly in the background, even crazy stuff. I had to use their versioning feature once to recover a file I've accidentally overwritten, a life saver. They're trying to expand their business with weird features and app updates that are getting a bit bloaty but syncing still works and seems to be their priority so that's good.
So, ultimately, you don't want to mess with what is essentially your backup solution. That's worth a lot. Dropbox has been in this game for long enough to have that calmness, that level of expertise that allows you to stop worrying. Easily worth it.
Syncing data between a bunch of different devices kinda sucks atm. My Uni's Google Drive is great because it's unlimited in size, but it's really slow and takes forever to upload stuff to, and it's difficult to access since clients are few and all (including Google's) are pretty terrible. DropBox is a lot better, but it's pretty expensive for the space you get. Bitorrent Sync is awesome once it gets working, but it's cumbersome everytime you want to add a different folder and you need to have the space on every device to hold your data, which isn't ideal when it comes to 250+GB music collections for instance.
The best solution I've found so far, as silly as it seems, is is simply running an FTP server with basic authentication on my workstation with its own 4TB HDD. On my local network, the lack of secure authentication is fine since it's shielded from the internet, and it has a ton of advantages. It's super fast because of how simple the protocol is, clients for it exist on pretty much every device and it can often be really well integrated (by mounting it as a folder natively for instance), and it's trivial to allow other people access to it as well, since I just need to give them their own account and folder permissions. Once I figure out how to VPN into my system from the outside, I'll be able to access it from anywhere, and I can use some encrypted ZIP backups of it every now and then to my Google Drive folder for a poor man's backup solution.
Needs to be drag and drop.
I don't want to type in fdkjgflfjdkhgk.jpg to send a file, I'd rather just select it or drag it. Plus there's no way you'd get any tech illiterate to use this.
You can drag files onto the terminal and it types their names for you.
I use KDE connect to copy stuff between desktop and phone and back. It's very good, and has other nice features too.
Nextcloud for me currently... a combination of secondary hosting and self-hosting.
Click through to the hackernews post originally announcing Dropbox. My god, its so good.
Yeah really Dropbox, you don't seem "viral" or "income-generating" and people can build this trivially with FTP and
curlftpfson linux. Going nowhere.Yeah, 1 and 2 are total miss, but 3 hit the bulls eye. Jobs said it better, "Feature, not a Product"
Except, it’s a feature that tons of users want and are willing to pay for. I’m not sure about how well Dropbox’s financials are, but they haven’t had to get acquired/acqui-hired yet. Though, they have had to raise the price, which isn’t a good sign. Personally, Dropbox is great and I’m happy to pay for it. Like the author, I’ve been bitten too many times by GDrive and iCloud such that I don’t trust them. Even if they work for most people most of the time, I don’t feel like I could rely on them the way I have come to just know that all my data in my Dropbox folder is always there on all my devices.
Tangential, but I use Grsync (graphical rsync) for "dumb" backups to an external hard drive. It works great with minimal setup.
(Certainly not the use case of the author, but though I'd mention it)
Ooooo, I had never heard of Grsync! TIL; thanks!
They also leave out Seafile. It's much more reliable for me than Syncthing ever was (because it uses an always-available server, and accounts instead of pairwise associations, and isn't trying to traverse NAT and deal with netsplit-induced conflicts simultaneously). It has real applications for all the platforms, including a good Android solution that doesn't involve digging out Xposed or Magisk or whatever. And while it's available to host yourself, you can also buy hosting form several commercial providers.
I'm wondering how many files are scattered between individual devices and services and not being synced, especially things like Apple iCloud Photos, Google Photos and so on.
Am I missing something, or is the submission just a few sentences, where the tl;dr is almost the entire thing?
That seems to be all there is to it. But it's a good excuse to talk about file sharing/syncing methods.