Mastodawn

Farticle Accelerator🇨🇦

Is anyone here using NextCloud for extended family chat/photo/whatever?

Thoughts?

EDIT: Primary needs are a fall-off-log easy chat and photo sharing system in one app that is available on apple and android.

Current family chat is sms/rcs that inexplicably randomly splits the group chat into subgroups and confuses everyone. Investigated Matrix already and it's too fragile / complicated to try moving them to.

No photo editing needed, no voice/video chats, no shared calendars etc. I'm now thinking next cloud is too heavy for this.

EDIT 2: Found a list of things to investigate github.com/itsbryanman/selfhostedFamily?tab=readme-ov-file

#SelfHosting #familynetwork

GitHub - itsbryanman/selfhostedFamily: collection of family oriented self hosted apps/services

collection of family oriented self hosted apps/services - itsbryanman/selfhostedFamily

GitHub

@scuttlebutt

Our family cloud to share all documents related to house car loan and for children studies is a self hosted nextcloud.
Some other tools too but nextcloud is really the only one to be daily used.

@scuttlebutt

I would recommand a #yunohost + #nextcloud app on a raspberry 5 with an external ssd and an hdd to another computer for backups.
If multiple members of the family want to join and have there own home, i would recommand to acquire each a raspberry pi and do ciphered backups using borg apps to othet member of family.

Farticle Accelerator🇨🇦1d ago

@artlog I have more than enough capability to self host stuff on my Synology, like this instance I'm posting from. It's already backed up offsite sufficiently too.

Farticle Accelerator🇨🇦1d ago

@artlog I should have stated my current needs are for adults who are currently struggling with the mess that mixed apple/android users have with sms/rcs chats and some shared photo stuff would be nice. Everything else after that would be a bonus.

I've looked at matrix etc and it's all too flakey and complicated for non technical people to use reliably.

@scuttlebutt

For what experienced with communication and social network for family relatives ( brothers sisters parents ... ) it did just fail.
Moving everybody to the same tool is just as difficult in a family than it is outside. It is a social matter requiring social skills, i fear i don't have those...
Nextcloud talk i use daily works with at work and in local associations but couldn't convince my relatives to use ir, even with mobile apps that are working well on any device.
For family... just look like everybody claim to need a shared tool but really want to keep everything private, self hosting family secrets...

@scuttlebutt a little bit. Really depends on what your family uses and needs. Mine hasn't stuck much with Talk, but Files and Deck have been great, sharing features especially. OnlyOffice backed by Nextcloud has filled the need for a browser-based document editor a la Google Docs, but only for me I think.

Talk needs a STUN+TURN setup for calls which I don't have and don't have the guts to set up properly; and where I'm at (Russia) access to public/default options is getting increasingly scarce as the government keeps tightening internet restrictions to herd everyone to government-controlled platforms. It's… a fun environment to adapt to, in its own morbid way.

Practically everything offering voice&video calls needs STUN&TURN though, so… we've kinda postponed that bit for now and settled on just not having that for a while. Messages, including with voice and video, travel across Matrix fine for now, so that's what we have.

Farticle Accelerator🇨🇦1d ago

@dside Matrix is a non starter here. I looked into it and it's not been reliable nor easy for very non technical people to use. We're looking for replacement to sms/rcs (which randomly splits the group chats for unknown reasons), and simple photo sharing that doesn't leave images lost somewhere scrolled way back in the chat. Editing photos isn't needed either.

@scuttlebutt yeah, this is by no means a recommendation, the UX of Matrix is pretty rough. But it's what we use. And after initial setup (sign up, sign in, auto key backup setup) for which I'm present, it hasn't been giving us grief. So far anyway. For like 3 years now. And server setup (Synapse) was easy. Only joining large public rooms is probably a mistake.

My next in queue to look at is Delta Chat, the UX of which I hear is sweet, but hosting a server for it is… a decision. Because it [ab-]uses mail servers for message transit, and if you already have a mail server on your IP, you can't host another specifically for Delta on it. There are no virtual hosts like with HTTP[S].

They heavily advertise "chatmail" for a complete set of features, which is only easy to set up on an *empty* machine, and it's also clearly meant for *public* use. If your country isn't censoring the Web heavily like mine you'll probably have a good ride with existing public chatmail relays to try it out.

Farticle Accelerator🇨🇦23h ago

@dside deltachat is high on my to investigate list. I have capability of only one ip at home and it's already been consumed for the mail ports for the built in synology mail system.

It is possible to compile the clients to use alternate ports but then I'd have to somehow get those modified clients onto the mobile devices and manage them etc etc.

I'm a retired sysadmin, it is possible for me, but I don't want to! The more I try to de-cloud, the more I wrestle with how to do so without overly complicating things. Making a new dependency on someone else's server isn't how I want to go either.

Oof. :p

@scuttlebutt if you already have a mail server, you can use it, you'll have most of Delta's capabilities. Just make sure to get separate accounts&mailboxes for Delta, they've recently stopped supporting using one mailbox for both classic email and Delta Chat – clutter in classic clients and needless notifications have been a problem.

Farticle Accelerator🇨🇦8h ago

@dside unfortunately I moved my Synology to MailPlus for the additional features over the stock mail. I would have to buy additional seats or migrate back (I will investigate)

It looks like delta chat might be able to use multiple chat mail relays? At the very least, the relays do not appear to hold the encrypted messages long term. Maybe using one of the existing ones hosted in Canada would suffice.

We have moved everyone off Facebook messenger to sms in the past year so any friction on moving to delta should be less. I want to set it up and test a bunch before trying to do the move.

> It looks like delta chat might be able to use multiple chat mail relays? At the very least, the relays do not appear to hold the encrypted messages long term. Maybe using one of the existing ones hosted in Canada would suffice.

@scuttlebutt yes, yes and probably. I'd certainly start looking at the app itself using public infrastructure before committing to set up a server for it.

Farticle Accelerator🇨🇦6h ago

@dside Agreed. Also will need to create a how-to for them if we go with it. They are all remote from me, like 3 hour drive for the nearest and 5-7 hours for the rest.

Screen sharing a computer is one thing, but mobile devices I have never tried and seems like a recipe for disaster.

matthew - retroedge.tech 1d ago

We use NextCloud for our immediate family. We use Matrix for chat, not NextCloud.

Our NextCloud server does not currently see heavy usage, but I am hoping to integrate it with GrapheneOS devices and use NextCloud for Contacts, Calendar and other things for family members with mobile devices with GrapheneOS (or other DeGoogled OS).

I do use NextCloud every day for my work calendar.

#NextCloud

(he/him)23h ago

We use immich for photos and really like it. Nc photos was not so nice instead, sync from mobile was unreliable.

NC we use for files, contacts and calendar. And signal for chat.

BTW: Matrix is just the protocol, which clients did you investigate?

Tanguy ⧓ Herrmann 6h ago

@scuttlebutt I self host with my little compose file that I share here: https://github.com/dolanor/dsuite

Nextcloud for files, calendar, contacts, that I mostly use on my phone thanks to iCal/iContact synchronization.

I stopped automated upload of picture as it seems (or used to at least) that it duplicates each picture for uploading. And it was not that reliable either, so I just do upload my picture manually in another way (rsync on the folder that is synchronized via the desktop nextcloud client).

It's for my family and some few close friends, so less than 10 people at the moment.

I centralize the account with a LDAP that I learned for the occasion.
Next step would be to add SSO and real integration with a picture gallery, because I'm not totally convinced by the nextcloud one. (It's old, though, I should update it, but life decided to make me very busy for a while)

But even with all the quirks (that are not so numerous), I can't recommend nextcloud enough.

GitHub - dolanor/dsuite: Like your GSuite :calendar: + + CI, but on Docker :whale:

Like your GSuite :envelope: :calendar: :file_folder: + :octocat: + CI, but on Docker :whale: - dolanor/dsuite

GitHub