Hey there!

I just wanted to share a bit about my experience as a hobbyist and self-hosting enthusiast. While I may not be the most educated on the topic, I’ve been able to self-host my favorite services to avoid relying on big companies like Google and Amazon.

A few years ago, I started my self-hosting journey with Nextcloud, and it completely blew my mind. Finally, I didn’t have to rely on Google Drive anymore!

However, I quickly realized that using a Raspberry Pi made things a bit sluggish. I tried upgrading to a more powerful machine. Still slow. I then tried with an i5-4460, but it was still slow and buggy. I even tried an i3-10100, and it was still a bit of a pain to use. It seems like many others feel the same frustration, so I know I’m not alone. I often wonder how some other people claim they have no issues with Nextcloud, but hey, good for them!

Because of the tinkering it seems to need, I feel like I don’t have enough time and knowledge to make Nextcloud work as smoothly as I’d like, which defeats the purpose of self-hosting it.

That’s why I’ve been exploring other options. I gave Seafile a shot, but couldn’t figure out how to solve a “CSRF verification failed” error. Projectsend and Xbackbone are great, but they don’t quite match what I’m looking for. I also tried Cloudreve, but I wasn’t a fan of its sorting philosophy. I did find Picoshare, which I stuck with, but for a totally different purpose.

Then, I tried ownCloud for the first time. Wow, it was fast! Uploading an 8GB folder took just 3 minutes compared to the 25 minutes it took with Nextcloud. Plus, everything was lightning quick on the same machine. I really loved using it. Unfortunately, there’s currently a vulnerability affecting it, which led me to uninstall it.

I also gave OCIS a try, and it felt even faster. The interface was smooth and fluid, it was truly impressive. However, with the recent news of it becoming part of Kiteworks, I’m a bit unsure about its future.

I can’t help but wonder why so many people have been raving about Nextcloud all these years when ownCloud performs so well right out of the box. I’d love to hear about your experience and the services you use. Share your thoughts!

  • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Nextcloud has that against itself that it uses advanced php features and large objects that need to be cached at different layers. That makes it a slightly more complex app than your go-to php CRM, but it’s not unheard of either (you’d be at the same spot hosting a large mediawiki or wordpress).

    The thing is that I have experience with other complex or high usage PHP applications and I know how to optimize things. What I see in NC is poorly structured code, warnings and erros thrown around left and right. The OP also said that ownCloud gave him a much better experience out of the box, and that’s still a “complex” PHP application.

    It doesn’t make sense some stuff like this to happen:

    NC webmail is unusable. We have to pretend it doesn’t exist. Even with a completely empty IMAP server it takes 30 seconds to load. I don’t know how it can be slow like that, they cache every single message in the database. Roundcube is 1000x faster and has no cache at all. Can’t they just peek the source code? https://lemmy.world/comment/5747030

    Or the screenshots I showed before.

    • u_tamtam@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      The thing is that I have experience with other complex or high usage PHP applications and I know how to optimize things. What I see in NC is poorly structured code, warnings and erros thrown around left and right.

      Well, on my instance, logs are pretty quiet and I am not a PHP developer to form an opinion on the overall architecture. But if you take the time to write down what you feel is wrong with the nextcloud codebase, I’m pretty sure many people (and me first) will read it with interest and perhaps even do something about it (typically the kind of “HN frontpage” content, if it’s well written).

      The OP also said that ownCloud gave him a much better experience out of the box, and that’s still a “complex” PHP application.

      Last I heard of ownCloud, people were saying that it had been rewritten in go or something similar. Funny bit of history, nextcloud forked off of owncloud, got a ton of mindshare in the early days, and quickly became the better/faster of the two (perf was one compelling reason for me to migrate back then). I wouldn’t mind NC following suit (in the end, we benefit from this type of competition).

      NC webmail is unusable

      I don’t plan on ever using it, but thanks for the heads-up. That said, if you feel that roundcube performs better, it happens that someone has packaged it for NC, so you should be able to use that instead of the troublemaking client.

      • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Last I heard of ownCloud, people were saying that it had been rewritten in go or something similar. Funny bit of history, nextcloud forked off of owncloud,

        The Go rewrite is another version, not what the OP is using.

        , it happens that someone has packaged it for NC, so you should be able to use that instead of the troublemaking client.

        That doesn’t make it all good, you lose the integration with other NC features.

        • u_tamtam@programming.devEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Interesting. Were the apps/features installed comparable between the OC and NC instances? I can’t even find an “email” equivalent app for owncloud from their marketplace.
          I don’t want to sound like I’m coming in defence of NC, but I’d be curious to find an as factual as possible comparison between “bare-bones NC” vs “bare-bones OC”.