[Discuss] Cloud Apps for Linux

Mon May 2 21:37:15 PDT 2016

To date I've used Dropbox, mostly by accident (when Dropbox started up I
had a coworker convince me to give it a try, and until recently I've never
really had a reason to try anything else).  I use it for two things: 1)
syncing some files I need for work across multiple machines, and 2) sharing
photos of my daughter with family.  The latter though is causing me to
reach the point of "to continue would be too expensive" with Dropbox as I'm
up against the space limit on my free plan, and last time I looked the
prices for the paid plans seemed....expensive.

Lately though I've been starting to play around with AWS for work, and S3
can work really well for simple cloud based storage.  There are lots of
platform agnostic open source command line tools for putting stuff up
there, and hosting a simple static site through it is really easy.  It's
less useful for my point 1 above, but for point 2 (sharing photos) I've
been working on writing a tool to automate the process of resizing &
uploading images to S3 as well as a basic static site that I can share with
family.  And at pennies per GB (and options for ways to cut that down), the
price is very attractive compared to the paid plans for Dropbox.  In terms
of reliability and durability, the AWS engineers are *much* better at
ensuring I'll never lose anything than I'd be able to come up with in terms
of local storage ("eleven 9's" durability is pretty tough to match/beat).
It's definitely not as convenient, but if you're willing to roll up your
sleeves a bit and write some simple scripts and such, it can be quite
useful.

On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 8:26 PM, Murray Strome <wmstrome at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Now that I have built my own FreeNAS Server, I have installed OwnCloud on
> it. It is really great for sharing files with all our computers at home.
> The only thing I have to watch out for is that there is an OwnCloud folder
> on each computer which is synchronized automatically to the NAS system, so
> while I could have a LOT of space on it, I must ensure that there is enough
> room on each of my computers.  Right now, I my OwnCloud is using 135GB.  I
> also use DropBox and Google Drive, but the way I have it set up is so that
> their folders are WITHIN my OwnCloud:
>
> OwnCloud folder
>    |
>    |-DropBox folder
>    |
>    |-Google Drive folder
>    |
>    |  ----other files and folders
>
> Things that I might want to access and change while away from home where I
> won't have access to my OwnCloud, or things that I want to share with
> others I put in the DropBox or Google Drive folders. They are duplicated on
> my OwnCloud, since those folders are within my OwnCloud.
>
> This is working well for me.
>
> I also have LINUX and Windows shares on my NAS Server, so if I just want
> to move a file from one computer to another, I will use those. For example,
> I like to use ffmpeg in LINUX to convert home video DVDs to .mpg but I use
> a Windows program to edit them. I used to do the conversion in LINUX on a
> dual boot computer, then boot into Windows on it to do the editing. Now I
> convert the video on my main LINUX system, move it to the Windows share on
> the NAS system, then move it from there to the Windows computer that has my
> editing software.  Also, since my laptop includes a slot for SSD card, when
> I take photos or videos with my cameras (not my camcorder), I can transfer
> them most easily to the Windows share, then transfer them to the LINUX
> machine where GIMP works much better than in Windows.
>
> Murray
>
>
>
> On 2016-05-02 04:47 PM, pw wrote:
>
>> OwnCloud works well with linux.
>> The server has a web interface that can be used to log in and retrieve
>> files  if you don't have the desktop client installed.
>>
>> The desktop client works much like DropBox and can accommodate multiple
>> shares from different servers.
>>
>> If you run your own server you can use DynDNS to keep the client
>> from losing the IP.
>>
>> The only thing to watch is that it requires the MySQL port to be
>> available, which is not really that big a deal.
>>
>> http://owncloud.org
>>
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>> On 16-05-02 02:02 PM, 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.)
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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