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Comment by johnsea | Hacker News Reader

Nice to hear. After several (abandoned) attempts and installing NC from scratch it seems to me that Nextcloud matures well. I like the focus on hub/groupware. Still some details from time to time which annoy me (and probably could be improved). But in general, Nextcloud is great! And using AIO (all-in-one docker image) it's really simple to install and maintain the server. -- So happy to have a good alternative to the Microsoft365 offerings!!! I do think Roundcube found a good place.

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Not sure which "focus on hub/groupware" you're talking about. Some groupware features are still horribly buggy and understaffed (e.g. the whole mess of co-existing methods of sharing files/folders with groups – Share vs. Group Folder vs. Collectives/Circles – or the crazy amount of WebDav and CalDav bugs that have been existing for many years), while "AI" (or some other buzzwordy technology) gets all the focus.

As much as I hat to say it, but feature wise it's not very close to being a Microsoft 365 alternative.

Unfortunately, I can only second this. The absolute basic functionality, meaning file storage and access through a browser, works fine. However, as soon as it comes to integration with the various existing clients, things fall apart, and it's not even terribly complicated stuff. For instance, I used Nextcloud to automatically upload photos from my Android mobile, and this has been completely broken for over 2 months now, and nothing is happening (see https://github.com/nextcloud/android/issues/11974). It's pretty clear they simply do not have enough staff to maintain all of the clients, and I'm just rsyncing my stuff now...

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for Nextcloud and hope they can survive, but one needs to manage expectations when using it...

If I only would need file sync I'd use Syncthing. But with calendars, adresses, chat, mail, decks, etc. I don't know another solution. Some compromises are necessary: I didn't find e.g. a good note taking app with sharing among members. Chat posts cannot be edited.

So far our AIO based installation worked well enough (with PC, Mac and Android clients). But we do not have a lot of files (yet).

After bad experience with incompetent MS support stuff regarding our (not cheap!) Office retail licenses I also had to manage expectations there: a lot of time wasted, they only wanted to move us to the 365 subscription model, could not help. Somehow I'm not convinced that with MS365 we would have a simple well-arranged flexible system (but just be bound forever).

May I suggest Immich for your photos? I don't have enough experience with it to guarantee it's bug free, but my first impressions are very positive (and I'm not afraid to say that most open source software I try is severely lacking).

Agree. The "reality distortion field" around Nextcloud fans is second to none. I hear it being touted as a replacement for Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Docs, OneDrive, Office 365, etc. Unfortunately it's none of those.

I had the requirement for the same basic functionality and switched to Syncthing several years ago. Haven't looked back: works all the time, every time, and it is much easier to maintain.

I use syncthing and nextcloud. Syncthing just as an easy way to drop things between phone and computer. The ~$5/mo Hetzner nextcloud instance for my Zotero backup, occasionally sharing/soliciting files from friends, and a few not so important backups (that I've been meaning to mirror to b2).

It's basically fine but I can imagine the more advanced features not working so well. It has been on my list for years to add recurring task support to nextcloud tasks but it's a pretty big effort since I'm quite unfamiliar with the stack and there is a decent refactoring needed before the feature can be added.

https://github.com/nextcloud/tasks/issues/34

I can absolutely recommend FolderSync. It's not open source, but absolutely solid for automatic and scheduled uploads of various files.

What can MS365 do that my self hosted RPi can't?

Hosting files, calendar, and contacts is the primary reason I installed Nextcloud. The other features are just gravy.

It's not the best written, due partly to being written in PHP, but I've not seen anything better out there that you can get for free and you don't have to trust a for-profit entity that's dabbling in AI and violates privacy on the regular.

It was frankly shocking to see such negativity about one of the only projects in that space that is achieving goals.

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