dropping owncloud

Source

  • since about 6 months, I was using ownCloud as a remplacement of dropbox, but I had unfortunately lots of problems and finally decided to drop wasting time on maintaining it.

Warning

This post is obsolete - things have improved greatly since that period!

  • it is certainly a useful service, but there are certainly simpler things to use to sync files accross computers and implement "your own cloud". here, I give some reasons for my choice and hope they may be useful for further developpment of owncloud or any other alternative to dropbox:

    • first of all, you need an efficient file syncing. it is dangerously buggy in owncloud:

      1. generates zillions of conflict files, takes ages to sync a folder with lots of files.

      2. the client happened to delete some files with no warning

      3. gives little feedback on how things are processed (the info dialog in client 1.2.5 is not functional). it took me a while to find a way to get some logfile (by calling the client with the --logfile argument) - but it is not documented elsewhere. the icons and error codes are not always informative.

      4. does not compile on snow leopard / 32-bit.

    • the server is simple to install but is too shiny over-the-top compared to its raw functionality.

      1. the upgrade process was rarely smooth due to "maintenance problems" related to the database (one day wasted for 5.0.4 > 5.0.5). this hints me that there may be security issues that are unresolved.

      2. the media server / photo gallery is merely useless

    • I bought the apps for iOS and android, and they are a joke

      1. you need to synchronize all your files, no choice is possible - thus it is just not useful and I could never access any file off-line

      2. uploading photos is buggy, videos are ignored

    • the ecosystem:

      1. based on a set of developers (some part of a company) and a set of users complaining about bugs that get closed is not reassuring

      2. the motto "you have a dropbox problem" is not pushing issues forward. certainly when comparing to the quality of the dropbox service

  • everything I say here is with a QNAP server (and I am not a

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sysdamin), so it is certainly partly my fault.