Thanks Ven, this is very kind, but as for me, I don’t think I’d have a use for it.
The discourse.SC moderators and and SC developers can all have Nextcloud accounts, if you’d like. I’ve verfied that at least one years’ funding is available.
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I’ve just found an alternate hosting plan that costs slightly more, but includes much more storage and bandwidth (everyone would get about 3 or 4 GB of storage). If enough volunteers/monks/nuns opt in, I’ll go with that plan. Like more than just 10 people. Say, 12 people minimum to make that plan feel worth it.
My offer now extends to all Theravada monks and nuns who have their independance, don’t handle money, and are tech-savvy enough that they won’t need much help to get started (and some screenshots and summarized instructions would be enough).
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Here’s the nickel tour of a few of the common features I use in Nextcloud. (I’m not showing my contacts, and bookmarks, calendar and tasks, for privacy reasons).
Setup of a Nextcloud account in Gnome Settings:
You simply toggle which features of your Nextcloud account you’d like your native Gnome apps to utilize (Evolution email client, Calendar, and File Browser):
In the File browser (shown in the dark window at the bottom), a new “file share” for the Nextcloud account gets automatically created (allowing easy file management in and out of the Nextcloud server, allowing operating on many files and folders simultaneously)! Note how the files and folders shown there are identical to browsing the files in the web browser (the white window above):
Which webhosts are you considering?
DigitalOcean and Dreamhost. I have experience with Dreamhost, and trust them (a couple of monastery websites I set up in the past are hosted there), however geeks I trust also say DigitalOcean is good.
There’s a good chance this hosting will be on US soil (not my favorite), however I am going for cheapness here, since this is donation money (with still decent tech support, and a known reputation).
I’m expecting that users will draw no undue attention to themselves (from various authorities) as they would use this. If they stick to even slightly Buddhist, clean content, then I don’t see how there could be any problem.
SSL encryption, plus an assurance that no private data would be harvested by myself (an offer you’ll never get from the likes of Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.), is what I’m offering here.
I won’t be turning on the new, beta-quality Cryptomator feature of Nextcloud yet. I’ll wait until that feature is considered stable before trying it.
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What’s wrong with US soil? We still have the 4th amendment though I’m not sure for how much longer.
Not sure the size you’d be looking at, but I’ve liked Vultr (almost the same as DigitalOcean, they offer a $2.50/mo size VPS though). AWS might be cheapest though.
I’ve also really taken to liking the OpenBSD code-correctness and secure-by-default philosophy. Was able to easily score not just an A+ for my webserver on the SSLlabs security analysis, but 100% in all 4 categories:
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=dhammabooks.online
I just said that it’s not my favorite. Naturally, my favorite soil is Canadian.
Thanks for mentioning Vultr and AWS. I looked at Vultr, and ruled them out, and as to Amazon AWS, I don’t trust Amazon. Without trust it’s a deal-breaker.
I did briefly try OpenBSD a long, long time ago, but my rule of thumb now (that I’m older and much less of any sort of risk-taker) is that a distro must have at least enough popularity to make it into the top 10 to be pain-free enough. I know, Distrowatch is not the greatest guage of popularity, but it’s an accurate-enough guage for me.
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I think each person is free to choose whatever OS they like. (Nextcloud is accessible from any OS, BTW, through a web browser, no Linux or OpenBSD needed on your own computer).
I would choose Debian for this server. I know it like the back of my hand: 20 years experience. It’s the only OS I’ve ever heard given the honorific title “Venerable” (by many geeks). It’s number 4 right now on Distrowatch, meaning it’s nice and popular in the Linux world. (Spot 1 and 3 are taken up by Mint and Ubuntu, respectively, which are Debian derivatives. I’m using Manjaro on my laptop, BTW, which currently has spot number 2.)
I feel I’m not going to get into spiritual trouble setting this up, because it will only take about 3 days, initially, and I already know how to do it, having done this install twice already. I also know how to pace myself, giving myself plenty of time to take breaks, meditate, etc.
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Of course! Even Windows, though I would make a small effort to dissuade against that. I was just sharing what OS I’ve been getting into these days. My own free-ish operating systems journey started with the *buntu’s, to Devuan (Debian minus systemd), to Artix (Arch minus systemd) (…seeing a trend?), to OBSD these days.
Not sure what you’re saying with the popularity? I mean Windows is more popular for home computing, right? Perhaps the community support and ease of finding solutions to common problems across the web. There definitely isn’t much online community with OBSD, but I’ve found it to have some of the best documentation around, all included in the OS itself in man pages. Up there with the Arch and Gentoo wiki’s.
You mentioned Canada, OpenBSD, being based there, historically could ship with encryption when others couldn’t… the US had disallowed exportation of encryption tech as it was considered munitions.
I guess you wouldn’t have to trust Amazon (or any other webhost) if using the Cryptomator option…
just some thoughts
I was referring to popularity in the Open Source World, not popularity on planet Earth.
I’ve always found that whenever I tried some distro that was not one of the most popular, it simply wouldn’t have the mindshare, wouldn’t have the support, would’t have the volunteer power to keep everything running smoothly, and annoying bugs would eventually drag down the overall experience.
In other words, it seems to me that it doesn’t really matter all that much, at the end of the day, how clever a philosophy or approach a particular distro cooks up, what tends to end up mattering most, longer term, is who’s got the numbers on their sides, because that’s ultimately where all the bugfixes come from, making for an overall smooth experience (which is what’s needed to keep me as a longer-term user).
Having said that, I do appreciate a certain amount of “purity” (but don’t want to go to the extreme extent of being some kind of purist freakazoid). I’m “Purist” enough that I could probably never, for example, be a fan of an RPM-based distro like Fedora.
I’m actually very suprised at how smooth Manjaro is. I’ve only found 2 minor bugs in a couple of months of pretty heavy usage (despite using a whole bunch of very up-to-date software). I was an Arch Linux naysayer for a long time, until I realized I wanted a really up-to-date kernel, installed easily, to mitigate Spectre and Meltdown. Then I opened my mind to Manjaro, and it delivered! Having said this, Debian still has my respect for installing on a server.
PS: My Samsung Android smartphone (purchased only like 7 months ago) still has no OS update to mitigate Spectre and Meltdown. What a deplorable excuse of an OS.
At least 2, more like 3 years of funding have been secured. Having said that, it doesn’t look promising that I’ll be going ahead with this. Not enough interest… 3 days remain.
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OK, it’ been a week, and clearly there’s virtually no interest.
I’m glad I put the idea out there, rather than making assumptions, then having money spent (plus days worth of labour invested), for no good use, which could go to better uses elsewhere.
Your offer is appreciated, though, even if the interest in accepting is lacking.
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Yes, I think it is a terrific idea, really! It’s a great solution, but for what problem? I suspect that many of us would see the benefits after using it, but we’re reasonably satisfied with what we have.
Anyway, thank you so much for caring, and may NextCloud prosper!
It’s quite general purpose. Here’s a chart showing what it’s good at (compared to it’s competitors, who are not Open Source).
In a nutshell, it’s like Dropbox on steroids, as you can add additional cloud-hosted functionalities (which are called “Apps”). I mostly use it for:
- synching files, contacts, and bookmarks between my phone and laptop
- sharing photos with family and friends, like a simple Flickr replacement.
Oh, yes, I understand that, I was just pointing to what problem does it solve for us. For example, I don’t have a phone, and I don’t have any photos, so your use cases don’t apply to me. For important file storage, I use Github or back up on a local hard drive. I’d like a calendar, but I only have about five things on it, so it’s hardly urgent. And so on.
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Just the discussion here helped me very much. Thank-you Bhante.
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In most instances perhaps it isn’t relevant, but just to note:
File and repository size limitations
We recommend repositories be kept under 1GB each. This limit is easy to stay within if large files are kept out of the repository. If your repository exceeds 1GB, you might receive a polite email from GitHub Support requesting that you reduce the size of the repository to bring it back down.
In addition, we place a strict limit of files exceeding 100 MB in size.
I also did a little testing to see if Nextcloud could act like a replacement for Youtube. The answer is “pretty much, yes”.
I used “Open Broadcaster Software” to shoot a test video, using 1080p, 30fps. It plays at a bitrate of about 1000 kbps (or 125KB/sec, which the slowest sort of home broadband internet in Canada can narrowly accommodate). I saved the video in .mp4 format (and uploaded it to Nextcloud, through my File Browser), which can then be “streamed” on the internet. This means, you need not entirely download an .mp4 file from the internet before you can start viewing it. The web browser will play the video for you, right within the web-browser, with basic Youtube-like functionality (like skip-ahead-and-back-on-a-timeline, and fullscreen), as it downloads, granted you have the bandwidth available to continuously support that 125 KB/sec needed.
You lose several goodies that Youtube provides, most notably:
- the ability to switch to lower resolutions (good for low-bandwidth internet), but with Nextcloud you can easily download the .mp4 file in its entirety, before playing it, in, say, VLC. That is to say, it can be downloaded, not streamed, if need be.
- User comments. Maybe that’s actually a feature, not a bug!
…but then again you gain:
- the ability to easily download the video.
-
No evil AI is psychologically profiling you, looking to optimally addict you to the service. Don’t say you weren’t shown the way to run away from the evil AI Terminators!
If someone wants to see an example of a video streamed/downloadable from Nextcloud in action, then ask.
PS: when in Malaysia, 3G internet could also support 125 KB/sec, but only at off-peak times of the day (early morning being best). Business hours and the prime-time evening hours would not come anywhere close to supporting that (and there was little hope of Youtube working either, during those times, even at low-resoution).