I am setting up my NAS right now, and I need some suggestions for apps that I can run on my NAS or self-host.
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I have seen some online articles, but they are too confusing because they list too many apps for each category.
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I want backup apps for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows. (It would be great if they could back up automatically).
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I want to sync my calendars and contacts.
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I want to download media like TV shows and movies. (And music, too). “Of course, only legal obtained from the internet cough.”
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I want apps that let me access my data from anywhere.
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I saw this cool thing where you could use a Raspberry Pi to access your NAS bios from your PC.
Os - Unraid
Ugh, Nextcloud. It is always touted but it is such a pain to set up properly, and then it is slow as molasses.
I’ve tried, and I’ve tried the similar suite from Synology, but in the end always come back to the Google system - much as I hate to admit it, Google “just works”.
For me google isn’t “just works”. Very few functions in the ui, pretty slow
I use nixos, so configuration for me is not that painful. And every version it becomes faster and faster, and right now it’s pretty fast
Google oppice apps are not fast, that’s true, but they are blazingly fast compared against Nextcloud or Synology. Only Office 365 can keep up (and is functionally better) - but eh, you know.
The problem is mainly maintenance - they do YOLO style database handling, so you can’t miss any release or you have fun upgrading. Plus you need to kick it after installing to upgrade the databases.
Other services (like SoGO) have proper upgrade scripts, and automatically adjust the database schema from pretty much any version on first start after upgrading.
Nixos + automatic upgrades = if my system breaks, then everyone’s system breaks
Nextcloud is literally “Jack of all trades, master of none”. It tries to do EVERYTHING, and it fails to be even decent in most of these things…
I actually like it, i’m using deck, cospend, share folders, manage some projects, send other people shares
For me it feels perfect, I don’t need to manage different services and know them in depth
Other people just need to create one account and we can do all the stuff by using our names, you know
For me nextcloud “just works”
I’m also loving Nextcloud for a simple way to do a bunch of simple things. Installing with AIO wasn’t so hard (though I plan to migrate to NixOS someday), and it introduces me to a bunch of things I can do (such as making links for shared folders with random people, no login required for them) without my having to learn a ton different specialised things.
Most of what I want to do I feel in principle there should be a better way (e.g. syncthing plus a web-frontend file server) but there’s always a weak point somewhere.
Especially that Nextcloud had decent apps for both Android and iPhone.
True, it’s a bit slow, takes most of my low-budget VPS’s memory, and doesn’t always work the way I’d like etc. but it’s great for me for now.
I’m already on nixos, so nextcloud is not a pain anymore
I’m fully agree on all the points you mentioned
I run nextcloud on a es i9 with so much ram I don’t remember how much exactly, 32 or 64
P.s. I believe the future of selfhosted cloud is based on syncthing, has some e2e encryption, and vpn integrated
We need some more volunteers to run relays :-)
Ed: or maybe ipv6 will solve everything one day