Norwegian Dropbox rival Jottacloud is finally working on a desktop app for Linux. Jottacloud, run by Jotta Group AS, has been around since 2008, offering
I’d like to ask people who use cloud storage what exactly you use it for. I’ve never understood the appeal. I barely use half the storage on my devices and for backups I just have an external drive. Syncing things can be done p2p via something like syncthing. So what is the actual use case for a centralized paid cloud service?
So you make weekly trips to the bank to back things up to your safety deposit box? Or how are regular off-site backups supposed to work with the safety deposit box?
Not a diehard fan or heavy user of it anymore but it is, frankly, weird you’d even need to ask.
It’s available where ever you have a connection. You can’t forget it or not realize you would need it. It’s just always available.
It’s off site if something happens at home.
Assuming you trust them, your data is safe. It’s not going to fail. It’s managed by someone paid to keep data safe for you. Economies of scale let them have more redundancy and verification than you. No stray atomic partical is going to flip a bit while it is on their servers.
You can be lazy about it. I keep a working NAS, an older, slower NAS I back up that NAS to, and gave family offsite another NAS that I also back up to. I have many backup tasks and don’t rely on cloud storage. However, I need to, at least on occasion, make sure everything is still working… or I can fuck something up if I don’t property document or pay attention when doing anything major. Wouldn’t need to worry about that if I just used the cloud.
I guess I’m just not like super plugged in? Like your point about it being available anywhere. I keep my mp3s synced between my laptop and desktop so I can listen to music from both but I don’t use it outside the house. In the car I have little sd cards that have music in them that I plug in. And the radio. Mostly when I’m out and about I don’t need the internet or anything I have stored on my computers. What is it that you need access to all the time? As for data backups the only thing I really NEED to have is my passwords and I don’t trust the cloud with that. I do backup like my music library and stuff too but I just put it on an external drive. If I was paranoid about like losing it because my house burned down or something I would just stick a copy of those drives into a safety deposit box for cold storage. I’m genuinely curious what things you keep in the cloud that you need access to on the fly like that.
I don’t keep them in the cloud because every company these days is either horrendous or one acquisition away from being horrendous. I use a VPN and can access anything I need from my homelab where ever I am. However, if I didn’t feel so negatively about the companies just keeping things in the cloud would be easier.
Personally, I guess you could call me “super plugged in” if you want and just leave it at that. I use a lot of technology both professionally and as a hobby. I don’t need most things all the time, it’s just nice to have whatever I want, or on rare occasions need, whenever and where ever. Notes, records, documents, music, audiobooks, etc. Someone asks me about a recipe, I have it to share immediately. I get delayed for 20 or 30 minutes or have a long drive? Continue my audiobook or listen to music. It’s convenient to have something and be able to actually use it whenever.
Similarly, I have so many spare sets of tools in different places if I need to fix something for myself or someone else. Yet I still, somehow, find myself without the right tool sometimes and that really bothers me. I want to be helpful and useful. I could solve a problem, I have the tool, but I don’t have it with me in the moment. The same feeling hits me when I don’t have access to my digital stuff, hence the VPN.
My point isn’t “OMG how could you even live without the cloud?” I just don’t understand how you can pretend it offers no obvious convenience.
I mean I’m not saying it doesn’t offer things to you. That’s why I asked. I think maybe what’s obvious to you just isn’t obvious to me because I don’t do stuff like that. Like my life really would not change that much if I lived it in the 90s instead of today. I just don’t do much stuff that requires me to have access to files on the fly, or show them to other people. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever needed to show someone else a digital file in my entire life that I was not emailing. If I was going to see someone in person I just print it out. And even thats rare.
That would be an extremely broad answer. Sometimes I just gotta send files to people. Especially in cases where E-mail would be a poor choice (e.g. large files), or where I’d need them to be able to write them as well.
Personally I send PDFs of rules and stuff to friends for RPG games all the time. Also things like recipes, just general home making stuff, or the odd collaborative project where I need like 5 people to be able to access a document so we can compile information. None of that work related, idk maybe it’s a community thing more than anything else some communities just do more and need to share and make files than others.
Syncthing is a PITA to set up, especially if you want to exclude certain files from syncing to all devices in your “pool”. It’s super cool, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not easy to configure.
For my use case, Seafile is much better. I host it in house and everything I sync goes to the server, then I can choose what I want downloaded to any other device or just grab files as neccessary. I use it backup documents and downloads on each client (Android, Linux desktop, and Macbook). Then if I need a file that I had downloaded to my laptop, but it’s not in reach I can use my phone to pull JUST that file easily.
NOTE: Some people do not like Seafile because it stores data on the server in git-like chunks rather than flat files. I have my own way to manage that so I’m not worried. It’s also a Chinese owned company. But I don’t pay them, I host it at home, and it has not telemetry or internet access
For my use case, needing to do the exclusions was the friction point for me personally. I did find the initial set up confusing too. For non-techy people, including myself when I tried it for the first time in the sense I wasn’t familiar with FOSS or Linux at all, it was confusing as hell. I’ll admit I haven’t tried it again since. But so far Seafile is the ticket for what I want to do with file sync across multiple OS and clients
Because it’s easy. If you trust the service and they have backup functionality, you don’t have to do anything, other than install and sign in. All files synced and “backed up”. No need for an external hard drive. No need to remember to backup. Skate files with others easily.
Sure, you can achieve the same by other cheaper means, but then you have to spend the time doing it. And that’s just for the people that knows what they are doing.
I have my nextcloud instance that back up my important files from phone and computers. I also work with petty heavy audio and video sessions that I need to share and be able to access from other computers. The nextcloud sever makes things so much easier for us. The minute I change something and save it in a audio session, these changes will reflect on other computers accessing the project. That’s on top of when I need to share to files to random people, or work on share document in real time with others.I guess not everyone needs these features, but it was a game changer for me so having this services on my own server is actually great.
I’d like to ask people who use cloud storage what exactly you use it for. I’ve never understood the appeal. I barely use half the storage on my devices and for backups I just have an external drive. Syncing things can be done p2p via something like syncthing. So what is the actual use case for a centralized paid cloud service?
Redundant backups. I know that if I throw a file into it, it’ll likely survive if my house burns down.
i just have a safety deposit box at a bank for stuff like that
So you make weekly trips to the bank to back things up to your safety deposit box? Or how are regular off-site backups supposed to work with the safety deposit box?
Not a diehard fan or heavy user of it anymore but it is, frankly, weird you’d even need to ask.
I guess I’m just not like super plugged in? Like your point about it being available anywhere. I keep my mp3s synced between my laptop and desktop so I can listen to music from both but I don’t use it outside the house. In the car I have little sd cards that have music in them that I plug in. And the radio. Mostly when I’m out and about I don’t need the internet or anything I have stored on my computers. What is it that you need access to all the time? As for data backups the only thing I really NEED to have is my passwords and I don’t trust the cloud with that. I do backup like my music library and stuff too but I just put it on an external drive. If I was paranoid about like losing it because my house burned down or something I would just stick a copy of those drives into a safety deposit box for cold storage. I’m genuinely curious what things you keep in the cloud that you need access to on the fly like that.
I don’t keep them in the cloud because every company these days is either horrendous or one acquisition away from being horrendous. I use a VPN and can access anything I need from my homelab where ever I am. However, if I didn’t feel so negatively about the companies just keeping things in the cloud would be easier.
Personally, I guess you could call me “super plugged in” if you want and just leave it at that. I use a lot of technology both professionally and as a hobby. I don’t need most things all the time, it’s just nice to have whatever I want, or on rare occasions need, whenever and where ever. Notes, records, documents, music, audiobooks, etc. Someone asks me about a recipe, I have it to share immediately. I get delayed for 20 or 30 minutes or have a long drive? Continue my audiobook or listen to music. It’s convenient to have something and be able to actually use it whenever.
Similarly, I have so many spare sets of tools in different places if I need to fix something for myself or someone else. Yet I still, somehow, find myself without the right tool sometimes and that really bothers me. I want to be helpful and useful. I could solve a problem, I have the tool, but I don’t have it with me in the moment. The same feeling hits me when I don’t have access to my digital stuff, hence the VPN.
My point isn’t “OMG how could you even live without the cloud?” I just don’t understand how you can pretend it offers no obvious convenience.
I mean I’m not saying it doesn’t offer things to you. That’s why I asked. I think maybe what’s obvious to you just isn’t obvious to me because I don’t do stuff like that. Like my life really would not change that much if I lived it in the 90s instead of today. I just don’t do much stuff that requires me to have access to files on the fly, or show them to other people. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever needed to show someone else a digital file in my entire life that I was not emailing. If I was going to see someone in person I just print it out. And even thats rare.
The biggest plus (for me) is “access anywhere”. If you’ve ever needed a document in a hurry, it becomes easier to understand.
I self-host nextcloud on a vps for this and other solutions.
Well I guess maybe its work related stuff then? I don’t work in the officey/white collar sector so maybe that’s why I don’t get it.
Me either. I’m a semi-retired social worker. Still, there are times I’ve needed “proof of something” that I have available on my “cloud”.
If you’re an artist, you can have a portfolio there.
Sharing things with others and off-site backups.
What do you share with people?
That would be an extremely broad answer. Sometimes I just gotta send files to people. Especially in cases where E-mail would be a poor choice (e.g. large files), or where I’d need them to be able to write them as well.
Fair enough. Is this for a work thing? Maybe I’m just a luddite. I never find myself needing to do anything like that.
Personally I send PDFs of rules and stuff to friends for RPG games all the time. Also things like recipes, just general home making stuff, or the odd collaborative project where I need like 5 people to be able to access a document so we can compile information. None of that work related, idk maybe it’s a community thing more than anything else some communities just do more and need to share and make files than others.
Syncthing is a PITA to set up, especially if you want to exclude certain files from syncing to all devices in your “pool”. It’s super cool, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not easy to configure.
For my use case, Seafile is much better. I host it in house and everything I sync goes to the server, then I can choose what I want downloaded to any other device or just grab files as neccessary. I use it backup documents and downloads on each client (Android, Linux desktop, and Macbook). Then if I need a file that I had downloaded to my laptop, but it’s not in reach I can use my phone to pull JUST that file easily.
NOTE: Some people do not like Seafile because it stores data on the server in git-like chunks rather than flat files. I have my own way to manage that so I’m not worried. It’s also a Chinese owned company. But I don’t pay them, I host it at home, and it has not telemetry or internet access
What was so hard about it? Their web gui is pretty good I thought.
For my use case, needing to do the exclusions was the friction point for me personally. I did find the initial set up confusing too. For non-techy people, including myself when I tried it for the first time in the sense I wasn’t familiar with FOSS or Linux at all, it was confusing as hell. I’ll admit I haven’t tried it again since. But so far Seafile is the ticket for what I want to do with file sync across multiple OS and clients
What exclusions do you mean? Like specific files in a folder that you don’t want synced?
Because it’s easy. If you trust the service and they have backup functionality, you don’t have to do anything, other than install and sign in. All files synced and “backed up”. No need for an external hard drive. No need to remember to backup. Skate files with others easily.
Sure, you can achieve the same by other cheaper means, but then you have to spend the time doing it. And that’s just for the people that knows what they are doing.
You trust them with sensetive data?
I have my nextcloud instance that back up my important files from phone and computers. I also work with petty heavy audio and video sessions that I need to share and be able to access from other computers. The nextcloud sever makes things so much easier for us. The minute I change something and save it in a audio session, these changes will reflect on other computers accessing the project. That’s on top of when I need to share to files to random people, or work on share document in real time with others.I guess not everyone needs these features, but it was a game changer for me so having this services on my own server is actually great.
Yeah I don’t do that stuff but if I did I’d use my own one like you. A self hosted one. I don’t think I’d ever trust some company with my data.
I think is like a team/corporate solution thing. Idk, i don’t get it either.