I’m not sure how long ago “not that long ago” is for you - I just had a look through the history of KDE and, based on my familiarity with the various screen images posted there, I think is about 20 years since I last tried it :-)

I’ll have a look at cinnamon and cosmic - thanks.

I’ve thought about trying a tiling window manager, but I don’t think I’d get the benefit. I don’t really do a lot these days and normally just have one or two things going concurrently and with two screens that’s trivial to layout.

The main thing I struggle with (with my old eyes) is things like Firefox that override the normal window manager decorations - I find the edges get lost and they blend into each other. A tiling window manager would help with this, but I just turned off Firefox’s ability to do that.

Oh damn what were your reasons for moving from freebsd back to Linux?

My work was AIX, HP/UX and a bit of Solaris. Linux development was starting to get to the stage where our customers were looking at using it for “real” workloads and I figured I should get comfortable with it again so I’d be in a position to take on production servers at work.

I don’t think I’m concerned about being on older (stable) stuff - I really only use Firefox (I dumped the Debian release and added the Firefox repository) and a few utilities like a music player etc.

I was also considering openSUSE Tumbleweed and didn’t really decide not to do it - it’s just that a USB with Debian was sitting on my desk when I decided to do it, so that’s what I used. A big part of my anxiety about switching from Windows was getting my data under control - now that I’ve done that it won’t be an issue to switch distros so I might give it a go. I may even try Slackware again now that you’ve got me thinking about it.

I thought about that, and we have space available because my wife is still paying for office for her machine, but I just want nothing to do with Microsoft any more.

Because I only used it for a few months and it was a while ago! It was ony mentioned to age me. Not long after I installed it we got nice new RS/6000 860 laptops and I ran an AIX desktop for a couple of years. Then we got Intel laptops and Windows.

I went with Debian because I’ve been running Ubuntu servers at home for years (since zfs on Linux became solid enough that I could switch from FreeBSD) so I’m comfortable with apt package management and wanted to stick with that. I didn’t want to stay with Ubuntu because of the commercialisation creeping in.

simple webdav server that’s compatible with the Nextcloud sync clients

Now THAT is interesting - when I was last experimenting with Nextcloud I learned that the files part is just a webdav server. Unfortunately I also learned that they have a bit of a handshake before the webdav so the client wouldn’t work with my apache2 webdav server. Thanks!

That seems to be the case. Really sucks that the documentation at nextcloud.com directs people to the AIO. I guess they hope that if you have a bad time trying to install your own server you might buy their cloud service.

Yeah, I can see how someone that has “grown up with it” could be happy. But as and experienced sysadmin coming at it for the first time - the documentation is a bit lacking.

Because an android client is one of my requirements. I can get files from SMB on Android using any number of file managers, but I can’t map a SMB share to a filesystem so files are available for an app to use.

Yes! There used to be a little utility that could map a SMB share in Android, but that got killed years ago.

So, use something else

That’s why I’m here - looking for suggestions

like Seafile.

I’ll have another look - you’re not the only person to suggest it. My recollection is that it seemed to be old and not really maintained.

I’ve never used the AIO image. I’ve heard it’s weird.

It does seem to be. So, I find it weird that the “core” documentation leads a new user to installing AIO.

You could also try OpenCloud, which is a Go rewrite of ownCloud.

Sounds interesting - thanks.

You need to understand the difference between a docker run command, and detaching to run a container in the background. Just running it with ‘run’ keeps it in the foreground.

Yes, I understand this. I was just highlighting that it’s not a great experience for a new user to follow the instructions to setup a server and be left with it running in the foreground.

For the passphrase issue: https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one/discussions/1786

Thanks! This should get me past my current hurdle so I can do some more testing. Again - not a great experience to have to come to a forum to get help to find a passphrase. I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss any steps?

Lastly, if you’re not familiar with containers, and this is a single purpose machine, you’d be better off just running the bare project on the host. If there’s no need for containerization, just skip it.

I’m familiar with containers, but think they’re overused. Stupid little things that are a single Python script (for example) shipping as a Docker image! But, I thought Nextcloud was complex enough to be worthy of a container? This is not a single purpose machine, but I’m an old, retired, sysadmin - I have no problem running a few different servers on the same host.

Are you referring to the “Archive” Community Project installation method?

Use docker or podman compose https://hub.docker.com/_/nextcloud/

I could do that - I guess I was just pointing out that someone coming to Nextcloud and following the install instructions does not have a great experience.

Nextcloud does not need a domain. Ip is fine.

So, their documentation is wrong?

https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one?tab=readme-ov-file#can-i-use-an-ip-address-for-nextcloud-instead-of-a-domain

Again - not a great experience for a first time user.

Must depend on your client and/or instance settings - I see raw up/down vote counts.

I get what you’re saying, but beware of the non-wifi devices that only operate through a proprietary gateway to a cloud-only service.

Well that’s a bit disappointing.

Exactly - I’m still very happy with my 4a. A used 5, 6 or 7a would be very cheap and very usable.

It might be expensive, but still worth a short visit. I’ve got a shockingly bad memory, but I’ll never forget the awe I felt waking up to a view of the Alps.

Almost a chuckle