Is there any update on the Nextcloud series?

Hi everyone.

I heard that Nextcloud is the best solution for privacy and owning your data.

I am wanting to know if there is any update on the “Nextcloud Made Easy” series.

I remember looking forward to it when it was first uploaded. I was always considering switching to Nextcloud but it feels so overwhelming as I have no knowledge of Linux servers or self-hosting.

It’s been a while since it was uploaded so I’m wondering if the series is discontinued? Will it still be happening?

I’ve tried looking for guides online but I can’t seem to find a clear cut guide on how to self-host, starting from no knowledge on how to do it. I don’t know where to start.

So in the meantime, where can I start?

Also, are there any drawbacks to self-hosting that I should be aware of? Do I need to maintain it regularly or does it “just work” once it’s all set up?

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Security risks, misconfigurations in ports etc. would be of some concern.

Occasional maintenance maybe, depends.

There are automated scripts on GitHub if you’re into that. (Too lazy to provide links…search or ask BingAI).

Or just ask ChatGPT lol. GPT4 works wonders.

I have taken the lack of forthcoming videos as a form of advice on its own. If Techlore, who do this kind of thing for a living, cannot easily make videos about how to set up Nextcloud then it is probably a giant pain in the ass.

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As someone who does a bit of selfhosting, I recommend you save yourself some time, money and sanity and go with a service that offers what you need instead of self hosting. I think it could be a good learning experience but it is hard to manage your own nextcloud server unless you are familiar with system adminstration. You will be in charge of maintenance and making regular backups of the server to make sure you don’t lose any data. You will also have times where your server goes down and this means you will have to debug what has happened and fix it.

I think you would be more secure using a cloud service that has a team of people maintaining and securing their servers.

However if you do want to give it a try I would recommend Umbrel as a starting point, all you need is a raspberry pi 4 to get started. You can install nextcloud and other apps with a click of a button.

Hope this helps.

Regarding our series. It has continually fallen behind on the list of priorities as we’re constantly overwhelmed with our numerous projects.

Some things popped up right after announcing the project and it’s been in limbo ever since. If I had waited just a few weeks to publish it, then I would’ve held off on announcing the project altogether.

Once time opens up a bit more (hopefully over summer) then I’ll see if I can fit time for it. Though it’ll have to battle time used for Go Incognito v2

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Unironically not a bad take

Not joking, Umbrel looks awesome. I’m gonna try it when I get a spare computer after I move. It’s open source (as far as I can tell ) and looks nice. Thanks for this!

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Thank you. Are there any services that you recommend?

From the looks of it, it seems like self-hosting takes a lot of work and maintenance. Should I just switch to Proton Drive when it becomes more developed?

What would the difference between Proton Drive and self-hosting be in terms of privacy and security?

Yep,

Photoprism: Google Photos alternative

Jellyfin: self hosted media server (like plex but free and open source)

Transmission: download torrents

Pihole: block ads on your devices with DNS adblocking

You can check out the other apps that are available here:

Can you auto-upload your photos from your phone with Photoprism? Or do they need to be manually uploaded?

Is Umbrel truly that simple to set up? Just a one-click install?

Don’t you have to spend a lot of time maintaining it? Is it stable?

Not much. You own your data thing is total bs, you own your data if you own the keys to your encrypted data which is the case with Proton Drive’s (or any other e2e service) e2ee services.

If there isn’t much difference between self-hosting Nextcloud (for cloud storage) and Proton Drive, then what is the point of spending so much time and energy on self-hosting Nextcloud? Is there any reason not to use Proton Drive besides it not having a desktop client yet?

According to Proton, Proton Drive will have a desktop client in the future, so I am willing to wait for that if there really is not much difference between self-hosting Nextcloud and just using Proton Drive.

Are there still any benefits in self-hosting Nextcloud now that Proton Drive is out? There will be a desktop client for Proton Drive in the future (according to Proton) so could that replace self-hosted Nextcloud?

Yes you can setup automatic sync from your mobile device Mobile Devices - PhotoPrism

You should check out their website, they have an appstore where you just install apps that you want, it will require you to go through the installation on the raspberry pi but that’s pretty easy. It’s the easiest solution that I’ve seen so far, I have tested it a bit and it seems to work pretty well.

ChatGPT or Bing AI could help people out having trouble self hosting etc…

When you self host your data, things are much cheaper.

But more time-consuming, right? To me it sounds like it cancels itself out with how much more time and energy it takes.