[Discuss] Cloud Apps for Linux

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2016-05-02 14:02-0700 John Blomfield wrote:

> In an earlier email I asked if anyone had any experience with Mega or any 
> other Cloud service, as an alternative to Dropbox, which I have been using 
> now for a number of years. Nobody answered so I didn't follow up but recently 
> I have become more dissatisfied with Dropbox support for my distro opensuse 
> 13.2 and Leap 42.1. Linux support by Cloud services is in general pretty poor 
> with support limited to Ubuntu / Debian / Fedora. However I investigated some 
> recommend on the net
>
> https://www.maketecheasier.com/dropbox-alternatives-for-linux/
>
> I liked SpiderOak but then realised the "Free" was a 60 day trial.
> I found PCloud a confusing interface on the Web and its desktop client has 
> only a deb no rpm or source.
> Copy.com is shutting down.
>
> I have therefore ended up with Mega that has lots of Linux support a very 
> easy to use client and Web interface and 50GB storage free. Not that I need 
> more than 1GB since I don't share photos and videos etc. My only hesitation 
> is with the involvement by the originator Kim Dotcom but he may not still be 
> involved with Mega?
>
> Anyone have any further advise? (I individually encrypt any sensitive files 
> before I upload them.)

Hi John:

My advice would be to not use cloud services at all based on the
principal that everyone should keep control of their own data. So even
for "cloud" services that developed very early on such as e-mail, I
have always used fetchmail to download my e-mail from my mail services
provider (Shaw in this case) rather than have it accumulate somewhere
out of my control.  That strategy, for example, allows me to choose
good spam filtering software such as spam_bayes rather than rely on
some lame spam filter provided by the service provider.

However, I would be interested to hear the other side of this debate
so what is your motivation for trying to use cloud services of any kind?

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________