I’m starting the process of switching from macOS to Linux-based OS as a primary OS. Apple’s ridiculous pricing increases for hardware year over year is driving me away from them.
I loaded up Pop_OS on my Alienware X51 R3 tonight and am looking for a cloud storage service that syncs with local files.
I have Dropbox but can’t seem to get it to install correctly or just work. The settings app won’t let me sign in or choose a folder to sync.
Any help will be appreciated.
I am using SyncThing to sync files to my own servers, but Pop_OS supports connecting to Google Drive. I don’t use DropBox, but some searching shows that there is a PPA to get it working https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu-linux-tips/use-dropbox-on-linux/
If your interested in hosting your own private cloud server Nextcloud integrates seamlessly with pop calendar, contacts the works. I believe there are hosting providers that will supply you with a Nextcloud server for a monthly fee if you don’t want to spin your own.
With Nextcloud, I believe it can also integrate with FreeNAS, right? I have a FreeNAS box running at home and use it for Plex mostly.
If it put my files on that, pulling them out of iCloud Drive, I can integrate with Nextcloud and then have access anywhere I need it and securely, is that correct?
That is correct you also can use lets encrypt for HTTPS access its all built in and there are lots of tutorials out there for setting it up. Word of caution its not as plug and play as Dropbox, Google ETC but once setup its just as easy if not easier to use. I have not set it up on FreeNas but im guessing it runs as a VM, that’s a good thing as you can snapshot before any changes, updates ETC ‘Life Saver’ also if its a VM an easy option is just spin up a Ubuntu LTS server and install snap then the Nextcloud snap and your good to go. Great to get your feet in the water but after a while you may prefer to set it up from scratch and customize it to your liking.
Very odd regarding Dropbox. Yesterday I came into the office and brought with me the USB drive with Pop_OS on it that I used to install on my Alienware PC at home the night before, and used it to install Pop_OS on my Optiplex 7050 to replace KDE Neon.
Then I tried to install Dropbox on the office PC and it worked the very first time and I was able to sync everything too. So when I went home I figured I’d give Dropbox another try. I spent a few hours banging my head against the wall on this and formatted and reinstalled Pop_OS three times and never got it to work.
No idea why it worked the first time on the office PC and never on the home PC all with fresh installs of the OS to work from.
Anyway, I decided to give Nextcloud a try. I liked Dropbox because it was familiar and easy to use for me on macOS and Windows before that. But I didn’t like that I wasn’t in complete control of Dropbox from a security/privacy POV. Although I have in the past made TrueCrypt containers that I stored in Dropbox and I felt good about that.
Okay, back to Nextcloud. I already have a Digital Ocean account with a couple of Droplets in it so I decided to spin up another droplet and use that with Nextcloud. I got it mostly setup last night and registered a new domain name to go with it and went to bed allowing time for it to propagate through DNS and all that overnight.
This morning I finished the setup including using Let’s Encrypt to secure it. I installed Nextcloud on the office PC and logged in successfully and then transferred the contents of the Dropbox account over to the Nextcloud/Digital Ocean server. It was much faster doing this at the office with a 1GB up/down fiber connection than at home with a 10/200 up/down connection on my cable connection.
I brought my MacBook Air in with me today too and installed Nextcloud on that it and it sync’d up all my files nicely.
So far, so good. When I get home I’ll setup the Nextcloud PPA on the Alienware PC and get sync’d up there too.
I like the idea of now having my own private cloud storage server that I control 100%.
This is a big step for me in the process of leaving Apple hardware behind and moving over to Linux fully.