OwnCloud Server 9.0 Officially Released (softpedia.com)

prisoninmate writes: OwnCloud Server 9.0 is without any doubt the biggest release of the world's leading file sharing and sync solution, which is used by over 8 million users around the globe. It promises to bring the collaboration and federation features to new levels thanks to the addition of new, innovative tools, as well as to improve the software's scalability. One of ownCloud 9.0's new features is code signing, which promises to offer users with a safer home for all their data by verifying the integrity of their ownCloud installations during upgrades or when installing apps, which also need to follow the new code signing specifications. The community edition of ownCloud Server 9.0 is available for download right now via Softpedia as a source package that you can deploy on your Linux kernal-based server, or straight from the project's website as binary packages for various GNU/Linux operating systems. OwnCloud Server 9.0 Enterprise Edition will be released in April 2016.

Comments

Linux

[110010001000]

Nice! I know this: it is a Linux kernal system!

Does it scale better now?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of Owncloud's key failings in the past is that it has a horrible time dealing with a share that has tens of thousands of files in it. (Seafile, OTOH, deals with that easily.)

Has its sync improved in the last few years, or is it still limited to less then a few thousand files per share?

Re:Does it scale better now?

[110010001000]

Did you not read the summary? It is world leading. Without any doubt.

Re:Does it scale better now?

[Anonymous Coward]

OwnCloud has improved significantly over the past couple years. It kicks ass and is easy to set up.

There are a couple things to keep in mind when syncing tens or hundreds of thousands of files. First, of course, is try to keep the number of files down. If it makes sense to, archive the files in a single tar or 7z. That works well for groups of files that you rarely modify or access but want around just in case.

Then there are some tweaks that make a big difference. The backend database can make a huge difference. SQLite is fine for a single user and a few thousand files but you will get better performance in more heavily used environments by using a heavier database. Depending on the database you choose you may have to tweak its settings to get better performance. Using SSDs speeds things up. Try not to modify thousands of files at a time. Use real version control software for programming folders, especially for compiled languages. Alternatively in the desktop sync client you can set file name patterns to not sync, so you could use that to ignore temporary or unimportant files. Lastly, in the desktop sync client you can choose which folders to sync. If you really don't need all of the tens of thousands of files on all of your computers you can select the folders you want and you won't be constantly syncing a ton of files.

It's so easy to install ownCloud I encourage you to give it a shot, even if just within a VM on the same computer (although I would make sure to use a bridged adapter for the VM so it has its own IP). They've really come a long way; 3 years ago I'm not sure I would have recommend ownCloud to others even though I used it myself. Now I heartily do.

Best of luck.

Re:Does it scale better now?

[TheRaven64]

No, performance still sucks because the designers still have absolutely no idea how to design a network filesystem. If they bothered to read the AFS papers then they'd know that all of the 'hard' problems that they're struggling with were solved decades ago (and have open source implementations). Like so many other related projects, they're far too concerned about building a platform without thinking about the underlying protocols. If I had to pick one out of open source or open protocols, I'd pick open protocols: if you start from there then you're far more likely to end up with both.

Re:Does it scale better now?

[Troed]

... or just install Seafile instead. I use an RPi for my server, which then mounts storage over NFS. The whole hosting is thus self-contained running of a single SD-card on an RPi.

And is still plenty fast.

I see no benefit with ownCloud. Also less secure than Seafile.

http://seafile.com/

Re:Does it scale better now?

[hoggoth]

> It is world leading.

It may be world leading, but is it web-scale?

Re:Does it scale better now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you stop spamming /.

Re:Does it scale better now?

[jospoortvliet]

Well, considering how ownCloud probably does more than seafile to secure seafile... https://seacloud.cc/group/3/wi... yeah, that's reported by our security guy. The other reports got silently fixed - there's not much of a proper, transparent security process there. But if you believe it's more secure than ownCloud, good luck with earning money on ownCloud's lack of security: https://owncloud.org/security - check the hackerone program.

Re:Does it scale better now?

[jospoortvliet]

We're working with CERN, AARNet and others to bring ownCloud to a higher level of scalability. right now, petabyte level filesystems are no problem but going beyond that is hard. ownCloud 9.0 introduces changes to break through that barrier. See https://opensource.com/busines... for more info. Of course, if you're merely talking about a few hundred terrabyte of data, ownCloud won't have any issues with it if it's set up properly. I suggest you check out the deployment recommendations: https://doc.owncloud.org/serve... There is ONE performance issue left: very many (thousands) of very small (under 100 KB) files syncing with the client. With very large files and fat network pipes, you probably also should increase the chunck size in the client to improve network performance.

Re:Does it scale better now?

[Troed]

My comment was based in that Seafile [can have] client side encryption. Has ownCloud added that now? Else I don't see how your comment negates that fact.

Or you could post the direct links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic, since the news mentions code signings and you're pointing us to Softpedia.

News: https://owncloud.org/nine/
Download: https://owncloud.org/install

Re:Or you could post the direct links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic, since the news mentions code signings and you're pointing us to Softpedia.

News: https://owncloud.org/nine/

Download: https://owncloud.org/install

Is this an ad?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Is this an ad? Because it sure reads like an ad.

Re:Is this an ad?

[Potor]

This is an ad.

Re:Is this an ad?

[110010001000]

It is probably a malware laden download from Softpedia. Otherwise they would just link to the direct download from owncloud.

Re:Is this an ad?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you follow the story link, it has a brown bar.

This "prisoninmate" seems to have a 100% submission history.

Guess it's an in-house (maybe "outhouse"?) spam submitter account.

Captcha: "disobey" OK, will do...

Re:Is this an ad?

[Banana Slamma]

I mean an ad for an open source project on /. wouldn't be too offensive, which is what is is.

Re: Is this an ad?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an ad. Look at the tags. It's tagged "ad"

Re:Is this an ad?

[Tailhook]

The softpedia link puts some stink on the story. Otherwise, yes, this appears to be a fairly inoffensive story about an open source alternative to Dropbox et al. It's gotten to the point where being mentioned on Slashdot is bad thing; it's assumed to be a slashvertishment for some commercial unicorn wannabe.

Re:Is this an ad?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like a press release or straight from some other website. It's a bit sloppy, because it's not linking to the original website announcement, but OwnCloud is a legitimate open-source project that's been around for years and fairly widely used.

Re:Is this an ad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at prisoninmate's posting history. Every single submission is a link to Softpedia.

Vote for Hillary

[Anonymous Coward]

She uses owncloud for all her to secret documents. Because ya know...when you need to share 'em.

Why link to softpedia?

[dbc]

Why do all the link point to the scumbags at softpedia, instead of to owncloud.org?

WHAT THE...

[Anonymous Coward]

spam

spam

spamspam

spamspamspamspam

Oh, God. The new management has decided that they will no longer hide the awful truth.

Captcha: "retail"

Don't forget about SeaFile

[Hadlock]

SeaFile is OwnCloud (which are both basically DropBox), except, Sea is a play-on for C programming language (and some Python). So it's way fast. OwnCloud is written in PHP and you get what you pay for in performance as a result.
 
 

1. https://www.seafile.com/en/home/
2. https://github.com/haiwen/seafile
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafile

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I agree with you, Owncloud is a much more feature rich system than Seafile. Owncloud can be your caldav server for synchronizing calendar clients (e.g. thunderbird or solcalendar on android). Owncloud can be your OPDS server for accessing all of your ebooks remotely using any OPDS compatible ebook reader.

However, I have personally abandoned Owncloud. It is way too much of a pain to upgrade (running it on a Freenas system). The built in automatic updater never works. Manual updates are fraught with issues and their own documentaton, when followed to the letter does not always work. Backups are a must, and you WILL have to restore from them at times when you screw up and the entire database gets hosed (unless you want to dive in and do manual corrections to the database). Owncloud is just way too much effort to upgrade and maintain as a home user and is something I can't be bothered with anymore unless I'm being paid to maintain it.

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[Hadlock]

SeaFile is about 8x faster than OwnCloud when running on something like a Raspberry Pi. Using a Pi as a file server is an awful idea due to a number of issues with bus sharing but it's a fantastic example to show how much of a cow OwnCloud is from a performance standpoint.

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[jabuzz]

I abandoned Owncloud shortly after installing when I discovered like all free software of this type I have evaluated it had no fucking idea about operating on your normal home directory without purchasing the "enterprise" version and then some horrible kludges.

The whole think is clearly written by a bunch of web jocks who have no fucking idea about Unix development and want to reinvent the bloody wheel.

I have a user model and file system that I trust to get the permissions things right. I don't trust some crappy PHP code to do it correctly, and I don't fucking want to have all my files in Owncloud separate from my normal home directory because what's the fucking point in that and then stored under the Apache user in /var. It's a total fucking joke.

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[dbIII]

I'm planning to do a quick and nasty sync thing to android devices from an orange pi so thanks for pointing out an alternative.

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never used OwnCloud, so maybe this is a stupid question, but why can't you just put links under /var back to your home folders?

Re: Don't forget about SeaFile

[bill_mcgonigle]

Does Owncloud handle symlinks? Seafile can't seem to understand we need files, directories , and links. All modern filesystems work this way.

Re: Don't forget about SeaFile

[kwalker]

The ownCloud (Linux) client does not support symlinks. I wish it did, believe me. There's not even an option, and it doesn't treat them like normal files. But as it is, I just have to reverse-symlink (file lives in ownCloud, symlink lives elsewhere and points back to it).

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be ok with the limitations, given that I like data stored elsewhere than in home and I could just sync a limited selection like .mozilla, .config, Documents to somewhere on the data store.

Though, if it turns out that Owncloud is just some NAS thing then why bother, there must be other options.

What I really want is that the web GUI has to act as a "private youtube" and especially a music player like a basic one on a smartphone, and/or playlist based (no library features, display art at most). Transcode on the fly to another codec if needed (any supported by the target browser). Use WebRTC if it makes any sense (I don't know). Run a few "radio stations" that play on demand. Do a low cost transcode of video (such as hardware based or high bitrate 240p) if needed. If I need more than universal low res playback I'll download the video or use a file sharing protocol.

Viewers for .odt, etc. + save as pdf.

Have a guest login that only shows access to media considered semi-public, and not links to administrator's panel, monitoring and whatever.
No shit given about OS astrophysics make that work on linux and ext4 and bash not netbsd, UFS and tcsh.

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[jabuzz]

If you want a "private youtube" then Plex or Emby(aka MediaBrowser) make far more sense and do everything that you want.

My criticism of OwnCloud, Seafile and all the similar products I have seen in this space is that they have literally been written by web jocks who have no fucking idea about doing this sort of thing properly.

It would be like if Samba stored all your files for your home directory under /var/samba all owned by the samba user and then maintained a database of actual owners and permissions.

The whole space is a complete and total fuckup.

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want it to look like some Windows Media Center or Netflix thing with a dark theme, but I sincerely thank you for enumerating the options.

I had assumed that Owncloud was this cloud thing that everyone was going to, so there should be what I want, a "music cloud" (which I interpret as a file server / web server / web player combo that recreates the equivalent of a basic desktop or mobile experience)

Should be in the same set of web GUIs (web pages) as the important and/or boring stuff such as file sync, back up, text editor, file manager and other stuff I don't know if I care about or not (calendars, cameras and sensors, even IP phone calls etc.), *ideally*. But it's not critical either.
e.g. for a "private youtube" if all it does is to view an .avi xvid file from a directory/file listing, converted on-the-fly to WebM/VP8/Vorbis (should be a sure bet) then it does more than I can hope for anyway. No need for ratings, cover art, and so on. If only audio is supported (but I need robustness in working with mp3, mp2, m4a, wma, flac, ogg, ...) and I end up having a completely different web interface than for file sync that is fine too : it's a lot more than nothing at all. Even if this gets used on Wifi LANs only.

I would favor robustness and ease (not too much sysadmin work) over features and integration, although some feature wishes are a bit involved ("read all music on all semi-modern web clients")

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[Coren22]

Owncloud has more features

Seafile is faster

Of course it is faster, it can't do half the shit Owncloud can. SeaFile is also damn expensive, 44 euro per user per year for file sharing software; Dropbox costs less than that for the pro version.

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[Anonymous Coward]

ownCloud has an app (plugin) that allows it to mount a bunch of external storage solutions (google drive, dropbox, amazon s3, smb/cifs, ftp, local mount point). I use it to mount the home directories from a windows server over SMB and it works like a charm. No need for the enterprise version, kludge voodoo magic or a replica of your home folders on the local storage.

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[Anonymous Coward]

So I tried Emby Server Beta, it has some fluff and scanning the library took an age. Was easy to get running and is functional if heavy handed (transcode pretty much everything with a large CPU load).
Music works but adding files to the playlist doesn't really work or is too hard (except for replacing the playlist with a new one) and if you want to see both the files and the playlist at once, get lost!
But it's working.

Smartphone browser hates the web client lol. Only shows two icons and emptiness. But I will have to try after upgrading the OS and browser there. A lightweight web interface is not implemented (made of text links etc., not fancy graphics and hundreds thumbnails)
Fairly promising still. It was easy to set up

Re: Don't forget about SeaFile

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want OwnCloud to share your home directory (and nothing else) you could just set the data directory in its config to /home/you. Fuck knows why you'd want to do that though. If that's your use case then you should be using NFS or even rsync.

OwnCloud is a web server product designed for multiple users to share files, calendars etc across multiple sites and systems even running different OSs. You're trying to do something really odd with it and then blaming the developers when you don't understand why it doesn't work according to your misconception of what the software is actually for

Re: Don't forget about SeaFile

[jabuzz]

I quote from the landing page for ownCloud "A safe home for all your data. Access & share your files, calendars, contacts, mail & more from any device, on your terms". It's on big letters plastered across the page.

I have a server at home it has my home directory on, NFS/Samba shared to machines in my house. The reasonable expectation is that ownCloud will let me access those same files.

However even if I was misconstrued into what ownCloud was I would still fucking rail at the developers for developing their own security model where every file in ownCloud is owned by the ownCloud user and some crappy PHP code and a database determines what belongs to who, and who can access what.

It's done like this because the web jocks who developed it would otherwise have to deal properly with the Posix user security model and being web jocks who code in PHP have no fucking idea how to do that.

Re: Don't forget about SeaFile

[jospoortvliet]

The reason we don't support it is because it woudn't work on all platforms. Seriously, yes. If you know of a decent solution - let us know.

Re: Don't forget about SeaFile

[jospoortvliet]

Hmm, I wrote the page, but didn't expect somebody to take the "a safe home for all your data" to mean you can sync your entire home. ownCloud is a replacement for the big proprietary end user 'clouds' like Google, Dropbox etc - give it one or multiple folders and the sync client syncs them between devices; you can share files, comment on them in the web UI, edit them online or locally and so on.

Sharing an entire home folder on Linux, no, that won't work. Lots of 'special' files and folders that won't be synced (eg symbolic or hard links, dotfiles and all that) because that would not work cross-platform, for one. And if you'd use two systems at once, you get loads of conflict files. Oh, and yes, permissions and user settings... probably wouldn't work either. The POSIX stuff is great but doesn't work on Windows or Mac so we just can't support that - lowest common denominator, sad but that's how it is - most of our 8 million users are on Windows.

Sorry that it didn't work out - and isn't designed that way. Hope you find another solution which can help you better.

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[jospoortvliet]

Sorry, ownCloud currently does no transcoding and things like that. While such functions could be added, it isn't there today. It can play videos - by providing them to your browser. Works for most formats, but not perfect. The music player is cool but doesn't scale, at least not to my collection (100 GB mp3's).

This is mostly meant as a 'file sync and share', that's the base of ownCloud: make your files available wherever you are, and wherever those files are (you can mount ftp, samba, webdav, dropbox and other things in ownCloud and get at your files in one place).

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[jospoortvliet]

Well, it depends on what you want I suppose. ownCloud does a lot of things with external storage, where we obviously have to store information about the files to offer search, sharing and all the other functionality. ownCloud 9.0 actually introduces the ability for ownCloud to use such features in the filesystem if they're there - or at least, a API to make the storage plugins do that. This is needed as we want to scale through the Petabyte storage barrier - see https://opensource.com/busines...

Re:Don't forget about SeaFile

[jospoortvliet]

Well, in all fairness, there's a open source version, though it is rather limited, and the project itself seems to slowly wither away.

Re: Don't forget about SeaFile

[kwalker]

All modern filesystems (Even NTFS) handles symlinks. If mobile is the issue, then treat links like their target type (file or directory), like everyone else has since the inception of links.

At least give us (users) the option to ignore links or treat them like normal (maybe with a warning about it not working on mobile or whatever platform is giving you heartburn).

Re:Misleading press release masquerading as story

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you show me where to download the dropbox server install then? Not the client. The actual server.

Open source - sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

First step from https://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/stable/owncloud/

root@mnemonic2:~# wget -nv https://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/stable/Debian_8.0/Release.key -O Release.key
ERROR: The certificate of ‘download.owncloud.org’ is not trusted.
ERROR: The certificate of ‘download.owncloud.org’ hasn't got a known issuer.

Re:Open source - sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Their certificate is fine for me in chrome, it's signed by godaddy. Check your ca-certificates package.

Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[Bruce Perens]

Remember, hey it was just last month, how Slashdot's new owner said they'd listen to us, and get rid of the problems that had cropped up with Dice, etc.?

Well, listen guys. This doesn't have a red bar or any indication that it's paid, but it's obviously a press release, it points to people we don't trust for file downloads rather than the people who make the software that is being discussed, and it contains obvious falsehoods (like OwnCloud's acceptance next to things like DropBox).

So, this is just an isolated problem that slipped through the cracks, right?

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[Anonymous Coward]

These types of problems don't happen with Open Source software, do they?

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[dbIII]

but it's obviously a press release

True but it's an announcement of a new release of software that people on this site are interested in and so it would have fit in on Slashdot at any time since this site started. The rest can be put down to nothing more malicious than poor editing and may even end up being fixed.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[Bruce Perens]

These types of problems don't happen with Open Source software, do they?

You must trademark your project name to fight this sort of abuse, and have an acceptable use policy for the mark. Open Source licensing was not meant to fight this, but Open Source does work along with a trademark.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[Harlequin80]

Maybe its been edited since you read it but the summary contains links to the developer as well now. It even points out that the binaries have been compiled by softpedia.

Personally I don't have a problem with this article. It is about a great piece of software that lots of us have a use for. Ideally it wouldn't have come via softpedia but that doesn't make the news not worthy.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[turbidostato]

"It even points out that the binaries have been compiled by softpedia."

Binaries!? AFAIK OwnCloud is 100% PHP code.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, hey it was just last month, how Slashdot's new owner said they'd listen to us, and get rid of the problems that had cropped up with Dice, etc.?

Well, listen guys. This doesn't have a red bar or any indication that it's paid, but it's obviously a press release, it points to people we don't trust for file downloads rather than the people who make the software that is being discussed, and it contains obvious falsehoods (like OwnCloud's acceptance next to things like DropBox).

So, this is just an isolated problem that slipped through the cracks, right?

It's a shame there isn't an alternative we could use instead of complaining about the quality of Slashdot. Maybe call it technocrat.net? </snark> Seriously though, it seemed like you had a good start on an engine with technocrat.net back during the "fuck beta" period but then decided "fuck it, CSS and actual website layout stuff is overrated. Web 2.0? more like Web 0.2, baby!" and then it completely stagnated from there. Oh, and that asinine real name policy didn't do it any favors either, I'm sure. A shame, really; I kept watch for a while hoping it would eventually go somewhere.

Since you still don't like the direction being taken here, you could always visit the other side at SoylentNews Dumb name, sure, but the people running it actually give a damn about the site. They've already implemented things people were asking /. to add for years and still haven't shown up here, like non-retarded unicode support.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[thegarbz]

but it's obviously a press release

90% of news IS a press release. If you judge by that metric you may as well shut down slashdot.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[Bruce Perens]

90% of news IS a press release. If you judge by that metric you may as well shut down slashdot.

No, you'd shut down PR Newswire. Editors and reporters may be incited to cover a story by PR people, but they are supposed to report the story rather than simply repeat the propaganda.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[thegarbz]

Slashdot is a news aggregator, not investigative journalism. The purpose of this site is and always has been repeat propaganda be it from corporations or someone else with an agenda. The exception is Ask Slashdot columns.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[Bruce Perens]

Read what you wrote. Slashdot is a news aggregator. News is different from press releases. News is carried by news sites. Press releases are carried by a corporation's own web site and by venues like PR newswire.

Slashdot editors have mostly been smart enough to be able to tell one from the other, up until now. If they aren't able to do that, they aren't going to hold the audience either.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[Bruce Perens]

One of the goals was not to do the same old stuff, especially where it was stuff that Tio Paco did 19 years ago that doesn't have any relevancy to today. So, quality content from real people was what interested me. Not really being a news integrator at all. And then I ended up with another, more interesting, project.

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[thegarbz]

News is different from press releases. News is carried by news sites. Press releases are carried by a corporation's own web site and by venues like PR newswire.

Errr not even close. Do you even understand what the "press" part of "press release" means?

Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It

[Bruce Perens]

Yes. I have a professional PR person who does my press placements and am married to another, and discuss their work quite a lot. Press releases are meant to incite a news venue to create a story. Corporations also make announcements on their web sites. But everyone should know that these things are in general hyperbolic if they don't just plain lie. So, in general any self-respecting person of normal competence working in a press venue will not copy these things, but will write their own story.

Slashdot has also maintained a greater level of competence than that, other than the not-very-often screw-up. In general those screw ups involve new staff who are completely untrained.

agpl.. no thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

not going to be forced to link directly to my source. no thanks, never, not going to happen.. not right on the fucking web interface itself. no way, jose.

Re:Misleading press release masquerading as story

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you show me where to download the dropbox server install then?

Here you go.

You're welcome.

Re:Misleading press release masquerading as story

[plover]

Is that a docker interface?

Re: Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve I

[Bruce Perens]

Whoever it is must learn not to send us to Softpedia, and it's ilk, but to the developers. That's critical. The rest is learning to filter the story out of the promotion.

Re:Misleading press release masquerading as story

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the retention mechanism seems broken.

Re: Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve I

[yzf750]

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

SeaFile vs Ownclowd (tried both)

[walterbyrd]

I have tried both. I find Seafile far superior to Owncloud, in terms of features, and speed.

But, Ownclowd runs on a standard $10 a year webhost. Whereas, Seafile requires python, and deep access to the webserver.

Practically none of the plugins for Ownclowd work correctly. Also, Ownclowd does not have markdown, whereas as Seafile has an excellent markdown implementation.

Re:SeaFile vs Ownclowd (tried both)

[kwalker]

Speed sure, but features?

I looked at SeaFile's website but their feature set seems to be entirely about file sync. That's all well and good, but my crew primarily uses ownCloud to do contact, task, and calendar sharing, doc editing (sometimes), and gallery/picture sharing. All plugins. It is kinda a shame about the markdown support not working in Notes though.

And it's pretty fast if you've tuned the webserver properly.

Re:SeaFile vs Ownclowd (tried both)

[Anonymous Coward]

Seafile is pretty much all about file sync (and it will do WebDAV). For calendar / tasks / email, other tools are far better (Kolab or GMail or Office 365, i.e. groupware software that is tied into your email).

Where Seafile really shines is as a secure upload portal for clients to use. Or for you to deliver files to clients over HTTPS rather then email. It handles hundreds of thousands of files easily, and scales very well due to its sync engine.

ODF shared editing

[manu0601]

One killer feature that was not completely done previously was ODF collaborative editing. How far did it go now?

Re:ODF shared editing

[jospoortvliet]

It's been improved but the company and community behind it are nearly dead (it wasn't primarily developed by ownCloud). So things were quiet until - Liberoffice Online came along and now Collabora is working on integrating that in ownCloud ;-)

Don't need it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ftp works fine. Http is great for links and such.

prisoninmate only posts links to softpedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a clue BeauHD.

bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

serve your files by a php application? worst idea ever.

Re: Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve I

[hoggoth]

Whoever it is, is a user that has only ever submitted links to Softpedia...

upgrade between major versions

[Anonymous Coward]

UNSUPPORTED!? Are these people crazy or what?

No more ownCloud here. BTW, finding the repo to 8.1.x was near to impossible. They removed the instructions from the site.

9.0 Upgrade has been a disaster

[itsme1234]

I'm getting like plenty of other users (as reported on github) TableExistsException when doing what is really a vanilla upgrade for a minimal system with one user... So I'm stuck; other than that there are tons of other 9.0 bugs reported...

Feature-wise it was really underwhelming, I've been expecting quite a few more things from it, especially that it has been for years mentioned on slashdot. Online editing exists only for plain texts, even previews on documents are really hard to get. Thumbnails on pdf's (and mostly everything else) are not supported for security reasons (yea, we can't get to render pdfs securely in 2016...).

On the other hand speaking about security you can't add read-only external storage (which would be extremely desirable if you have some GBs of pictures for example you would like to be able to see and share in owncloud but don't want to expose them rw to security or other owncloud issues).