Hello all,
For a few days now I have been reading about the shiny new opencloud alternative to nextcloud. Has anyone tried to migrate from nextcloud to opencloud?
I have not found a guide about how to move the files from one to the other. I want to try it out and if I like it enough, move. But how does one do that?
Official open cloud docs mention rclone.
Alternatively I think u can just copy files directory and restart opencloud. I think it supposed to recognize them.
I’ve genuinely been thinking the same lately , Nextcloud keep implementting new features and AI crap etc etc , but should be working on stability, reliability and improving performance. Since the last update , talk won’t connect video calls on the Nextcloud AIO which was designed to make it easy. Time to look else where for similar projects like opencloud for files , immich for photos and maybe something like Jitsu for calls and chat.
I’m testing it since yesterday next to my current nextcloud inatance. It is much more lightweight than nextcloud and suits my needs perfectly when it comes to features. Buuuut… for now I can’t migrate to it because of issues I have with android app, I’m using authelia as IdP and after I finally made it to work together I’m constantly logged out from the mobile app, there are few unresolved issues on github that after those are sorted out I hope I can make a switch. For now I will stay with nextcloud
The nextcloud android app I use it to get a file off the server but not much more. Are you saying that the opencloud app can’t even be used for that at the moment?
Probably depends if you are going to use external Identity provider or not, in my case I want to use it authenticating with Authelia - which NextCloud can handle but I coulndn’t make it to work properly with OpenCloud. Those issues seems to be related:
- https://github.com/opencloud-eu/opencloud/issues/1592
- https://github.com/opencloud-eu/desktop/issues/246
- https://github.com/opencloud-eu/desktop/issues/217
Edit: if you not using external Identity Provider you should be fine though
But does open cloud have its own auth system? I have been using the next loud auth with the two factor authentication and it has worked fine so far.
Reading through the comments, thisnwill get very confusing with the naming…
I made the switch a few months back. Manually migrated my files over using the desktop apps for both, but it was maybe 200GB of junk so it didn’t take long.
OpenCloud is great. Much faster, much simpler, does what it needs to do. That being said, it is very new so documentation is lacking, and the desktop and mobile app are VERY basic (the mobile app doesn’t have a dark theme and only offers a limited photo sync right now, for example, instead of setting various one or two-way synced folders).
It’s also worth nothing that their compose file and OIDC support are both a mess. The compose file is easy enough to work around, plenty of folks have put together cleaner, minimal single file setups. For OIDC, I did get it working with Authentik but it loves to constantly log me out mid-session in Librewolf all the time. For some reason they use a hard-coded clientID for OIDC, and even worse the ID is different for web, desktop, and mobile. Very bizarre.
So it’s far from flawless, but it’s early in development and overall it’s still a better fit for me than Nextcloud.
Good to know I’m not the only one. I just set up OpenCloud with Authentik OIDC and I see those auto logouts too (like after 5 minutes). Haven’t started debugging yet.
I’ve just accepted it for now while I pray they work on updating it to officially support anything that’s not keycloak lmao
OpenCloud has made a conscious decision not to use relational databases and instead uses files to store metadata. This decision simplifies the system considerably and at the same time helps to improve scalability and system stability.
Well color me convinced. The most frustrating part about updating Nextcloud is fixing the database schema.
I don’t even want a database I just want a lightweight webui for manage my files from a browser.
OpenCloud fits the bill much better.
Databases are not the issue but that the updater doesn’t handle it… My personal instance and our work instance never take long (a few seconds) to fix the database. I mean the instance is already in maintenance mode and adding a checkbox to do it or not to do it, should be simple. I don’t know if there are instances where it takes long and its better to do it during the night.
not sure why you think this? You still have to have some state (you cannot just rehydrate state of file system upon restart and keep everything in mem). To rephrase, those who don’t understand databases are bound to reimplement them…poorly. Why you think upgrade of metadata schema in those files will be less of an issue on upgrades (surely this will happen, file format will change, just now without constraints, foreign keys, checks and with manual reindexing and manual query optimizations)?
Not OP, but having files and folder structures accessible in the OS helps with a lot of tasks and interoperability.
If I want to add media files to Jellyfin, etc, I can’t just drop them into the video folder remotely because I have it mapped to a particular folder on the drive. If I want to make a copy of a large folder, I first have to mount the cloud as a “remote” drive, then do the operation from there.
It’s much easier to access files and folders outside of a database if they are needed for anything outside of the cloud service. I know that there may also be some security and efficiency factors that make a database favorable, but in terms of ease of use, it is just more effort to use a fileserver that operates through a database.
The files and folders of NC are outside of the database. They are fully browseable in the filesystem. The database is just there for the metadata.
You can totally do that in nextcloud. All your file structure is keeped in the directory of nextcloud. The database only keep metadatas about what is shared and such things. One soft that strip the file structure and store it only as metadata in a database is Seafile. For your usecase, you can drop your files in your nextcould directory at the right place and invoke the command
occ files:scan. It doesn’t watch for file changes, but you could certainly setup a Cron or a script to invoke it remotely.
For people wondering about the source of the project:
- at first there was Ownlcoud
- when the business model proved conflictuous with community management, Nextcloud was born
- when PHP proved not good enough, Owncloud Infinite Scale was born
- when some dev were not happy with kiteworks, current owner of the dev company, the left to create Opencloud based on Owncloud Infinite Scale
Kiteworks threatened them about illegal worker theft, they were not happy a lot of dev left for the fork, and as an american company, they don’t know worker right.
sigh the naming of these projects… I know if you’ve been paying attention to development projects then the similarities in naming helps you, you can assume 1 project was forked from another and vaguely already know what the project does, is used for, etc. But for nontechnical newbies I’m sure its confusing as hell having like 4 products all named similarly and you have no idea why or what the difference is and which one to choose.
Anyway, thanks for spelling it out, for anyone confused.
At least they are searchable. We use outline at work and try to find some stuf on search engines for it XD
Imagine adding OpenDesk to the mix
So… I should just continue using nextcloud?
Although people mention efficiency, for many setups we just don’t care. If it ain’t broke for you, don’t fix it. Wait, revisit the issue a year or two from now.
If it works for you, there’s no reason not to keep using it.
If it looks like an upgrade in performance and simplicity and you think it’s worth swapping, then you could consider it, though personally I’d wait until it’s a bit more mature/proven (maybe it is already idk).
What are the benefits? They’d have to be pretty big to make it worth switching away from nextcloud’s copyleft license imo
They have similar licences.
NextCloud server is AGPL 3.0
OpenCloud server is Apache 2.0
AGPL is a strong copyleft license that prevents corporate takeover of the project, and Apache is a fully permissive license that does not. They could hardly be more different
I have no clue about the licensing, it appears to be a European project so I figured I could try it for a bit. But I realize a better approach would be to just test it out with a few unimportant files before I commit to it.
I have been using nextcloud for about 5 year now. So I have quite a few file and about 5 users on my instance
Nextcloud is an European project too.
I only heard about open loud when the European criminal court made a. Announcement that they will drop Ms office 365 for this opencloud and I got excited. Makes me wonder why they didn’t go for next loud if it is European too?
They went with OpenDesk, which uses Nextcloud as Cloud System.
Where have you read that they are going to switch to OpenCloud?
shit i think what happened is I read about that announcement and got excited and then started hunting for that opendesk and somehow landed on opencloud. now i am even more confuse because opendesk seems to be more compatible with nextcloud but opencloud seems faster. i have to keep digging and run some tests this weekend
Is it maintained? I just looked up their GitHub and it’s been 4 years, and the repo is archived. I wouldn’t install if it’s not getting updates…
Mmmh, maybe it was wrong repo, this one seems moar accurate I guess : https://github.com/opencloud-eu/opencloud
The last release was 4 days ago. You must be looking at the wrong project
@amateurcrastinator so funny. Wasn’t nextxloud starters because decisions Opencloud made?
Ah my mistake it was Owncloud.
Yep. But owncloud went from old and idle to active again. It seems to be a more LTS take on it where NextCloud is your All Features Faster mandate.
Just show me the one that doesn’t rely on containers, venvs, npm or other supply-chain risks.
Is it possible just to copy your files on your laptop\desktop to the opencloud folder once it’s setup and wait for them to sync? It might take a while but would be the easiest, plus giving you a backup copy on your hardware.
I’ve never heard of this but looks very cool!
i moved to sftpGO instead and am quite happy










