This Nextcloud Alternative Caught Me Off Guard Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 In this video, what we're going to be doing is checking out Cloud Rave, a application that I've been meaning to check out for quite a while. And at least this seems to be a very beautiful, very feature-rich way to have a file management server in your home lab. I am one here who's definitely very partial to Nextcloud. It is my preference, but that doesn't mean that my preferences can't change.

00:21 Granted, this platform is specifically for files only. And admittedly, for me, this might be good as I've been switching some of the other things like I don't use Nextcloud Deck as much anymore. I use my very own project management system. Instead of using Nextcloud News, I'm using a self-hosted like NN automation for a newsletter. I love Nextcloud, but I am slowly replacing a lot of these services in that big application to a bunch of different really specific things.

00:47 With any really nice open-source project like that, how are they making money? Let's go over here, go to pricing, and then we have the free community edition here, and then right here under Pro, it looks like some of the share features are locked down. So, granular permissions, prices for share links, modify delete via a share link, you have storage management policies, user and authentication, which it looks like they locked down OIDC, which kind of sucks because implementation like Deck is real easy to do.

01:19 And it would be nice if I could just use like Pocket ID with this, but that is locked down, so there are some cons here. They have a service where you can self-host your own and charge people for it. And then they have some extensions that seem to be locked down under Pro, including activity logs, which kind of sucks, site announcements, note selection, iOS licenses, and that's another thing to note.

01:39 If we go over to products, go to their iOS application, this is going to cost you. I'm not sure how much that is in dollars. I think it's about a buck a month, but they do also have a desktop application, which they don't charge you for. And it looks like it's only a Windows client, which I mean, the lack of a Mac OS application might be a deal breaker for me, but we're still going to we're still going to try it out.

02:01 And deploying it is actually pretty simple. Here we have a simple Docker Compose file stack, which we are going to pull and get into right after I think the sponsor of today's video, Incogni. So, here's something that's kind of unsettling. There are hundreds of data brokers out there that have your personal information, your name, your address, your phone number, email, and they're just selling it to whoever wants it.

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03:29 Let's get out of there. We have Proxmox here. I've spun up a temp temporary LXC to go ahead and test this out. Generally, if you're running Docker, I do recommend you do it in a VM or on actual hardware, but what I need to do real quick is install Docker on this machine. I have a nice little guide here on techut.tv if you want to learn how to use Docker and get it spun up for yourself.

03:51 So, we'll just go ahead and give that some time. I am on a root account, so I won't need to do it, but generally after you install Docker, you're going to want to add your user to that Docker group. And then here, we're going to grab this get clone. So, let's give this a copy, head back over here, and then drop it on in. And then from there, we can CD right on into it.

04:10 And we can see the files that we have there. We have a couple different Docker Compose's. This one is what we're probably going to use. This one is for if we are running Pro. And then this one right here is for the uh file search functionality. It says all that info right here, full text search add-on, which I'm not really going to test. We're going to copy and paste the environmental variable example to just a .env file.

04:32 And then real quick, let's check out what we got going on in here. So, Docker Compose YAML, this is the one we're going to run. Looks like we're running a few different things. We have the actual service here with all the ports. We have some default information for Postgres, cuz we are running a Postgres database, and uh Redis for uh on-memory database stuff.

04:51 And then, let's check out that ENV file, see if there's anything we need to change, which it looks like this is just for the Pro license key. So, we don't even need it. Let's spin it up, shall we? Let's do it. So, Docker Compose up -d. Actually, let's just go up so we can see if there's a failure right out of the gate. And it looks like we are going to be on port 5212.

05:16 So, wait for all this to finish pulling here. I really wish they had a macOS desktop client, or at least a Linux client. That would be schnerzy. There it is. I don't see any major errors or anything, so we can go ahead and hit D to get out of there. And then, let's figure out what our IP address is with an IPA. And we are going to be running on the port 179 at 5212.

05:36 So, we'll just go ahead and use this, 5212. Enter. And here we are. All All so here we are. Now, uh let's just upload something real quick. I have a Netbird assets folder. So, if I drag and drop that in there, look at that. Super quick. Everything automatically uploaded this, but it looks like if I double-click on it, we have the option to open it with a couple different things.

06:02 Looks like we have a built-in image viewer. So, let's go always for that one. Hey, look at that. Even loads in the GIF nice. If I go over here to Netbird assets, look at that. It's loading all of the images nice and easy. A single click doesn't open it. A double click does. Now, let's do always again. Must be by the file type. So, there we go. Now, it's all opening.

06:25 If I hover over it, we get little slightly bigger previews or at least the full aspect ratio of those previews. So, that is very nice. If I go over to files, go new, of course, we have upload options. We have a new remote download, which is cool. So, you can paste and download links. So, that would work something like, let's go grab something. If I wanted to download Proxmox directly to it, I could probably copy this link, head back over here, and then paste that on in.

06:52 Click okay. There we go. Task created. Let's view the task, shall we? It's processing processing unknown. Let's give it a click. Ah, there we go. If we click on it, looks like it's downloading. There we go. Now, it knows what it's doing. So, that's really cool. A real nice way to put in big files, just download them directly to this server if you would like to.

07:11 It doesn't look like the actual progress bar is in real time. It's just kind of updating when it feels like it. And the download is complete. So, now it's going to transfer. And it looks like we have a seeding option, too. So, that you might be able to use this as a torrent client. And there we go. It's done. So, if I go to my files, we will then have the Proxmox ISO right here.

07:28 If I double-click on something like this, can't open it. So, it's just going to give me the option to download it. Now, let's say I wanted to share this Proxmox. If I click on this share button, we do have the option to password protect it. Um, expire after download. So, in this case, we'd want to put like our instance behind a reverse proxy if we wanted to actually properly share this.

07:52 Give this a copy and then just head on over here, drop that in. Look at that. We have one file being shared to me. So, you can kind of get an idea of what that that would look like if we put it behind a reverse proxy. So, let's get out of there and head back over here. And we have this on this side. So, it's going to organize all of our files and everything by the type.

08:15 We don't have any documents, but if I go to my files, I go new. Let's say we want a new markdown file. We can just call this test. And look at that. We have a full-fledged markdown editor. So, this is a test doc and it's markdown. So, I should be able to just do something like that. Save it, close it out, and now we have that test and it should appear in my documents.

08:42 There it is. Double click, markdown editor, always very nice. Let's close that out. Okay. We have other stuff like shared with me. We have a trash, shared by me. If I go to connect and mount, so this is where we can add WebDAV accounts, the iPad or iOS app, and the Windows client. We have our background tasks, which we were running one earlier, which happened to be a remote download.

09:05 Actually, before we dive into the admin settings, let's check out our personal settings. So, we can change our display name if we would like to. So, save that. Change your profile picture. Sweet deal. And then we have some preferences, so you can go ahead and change all that. Pretty basic stuff. We have our theme color and purple. View settings, sync to server.

09:22 And then we have our folder click action, which is cool that you could select that there as well. Now, here we do have uh two-factor authentication and passkey. So, apparently enabling uh O OCID providers is specifically what's blocked off in their uh premium version. So, if like if I add a passkey, oh, we need a probably HTTPS to enable this. I'm going to go to NetBird proxy.

09:45 We recently released a proxy feature, but I am working or going to release a full video on getting all this spun up. So, real quick, I added cloud.hopkins.sh. You can see if I click configure, I just have this domain pointing to this resource resource resource on my local network for my subnet. It's real easy to set up. I'll link to NetBird's video on this if you're interested.

10:09 So, if I go to it through here, you can see cloud.mydomain, we have everything still here ready to go. And here, if I go to the settings, I might be able to enable passkey. Uh, it's just not wanting to do it. Sad day. But, you can enable two-factor authentication here if you see fit. Now, from there, let's dive into the admin settings. So, if I go down over here, go to dashboard.

10:32 Oh, look at that. Confirm site URL. Uh, do you want this to be the primary site? Sure, let's do it. So, here we have our trends. So, just a little bit has happened. We have one user and 63 files. So, you get some nice status or analytics for your actual instance right here. Link to their home page, some version changes, which is nice. But, here going through some of the settings, we have our basic settings.

10:54 So, you could change the site name and all that. We have our URL with what looks to be our secondary and or two secondary URLs and our primary, which is the URL I just put behind the proxy. Announcement, which is a pro feature. Looks like you could change all the branding and everything like that, which that's cool that they don't lock that down. So, you could kind of brand it with like your own company or whatever you wanted to be.

11:15 And some mobile application and settings. For the file system, you could see the max size for editable documents. Just a bunch of pretty basic settings you'd expect out of a uh, file server like this. One thing that's worth noting is if I go over here for example, it says we have a terabyte available. The LXC I set up only has like 200 gigs of space.

11:38 So there's probably somewhere to change that. Not here, but it's cool. Right here's how you change the actual file path names and all that. How the files are actually stored on the system. So you can add nodes. We have our main master node right here with all of these specific settings for the node. And then we have groups and user stuff. So groups here.

11:58 Oh, this is where the storage quota is. So I would want to probably change this to better resemble how much storage I actually have on the system. So probably like 200. And then if we go back over here and give it a refresh, look at that. Looking a little better there. Users, so you can add your users here. If I create a user, pretty simple email, password, and user group.

12:19 It would be cool here if you could send like an invite link or something so people can set their own password. Then we have files. So looks like bulk file editing from the admin side of things, which is cool. So you can see other people's files. You can see right now it's only my files cuz I'm the only user. But assuming you'd be able to see and manipulate other people's files as the admin.

12:42 File blobs, shares that you can manage. So you can see me as this one user has created this share a little bit ago. And then background tasks. You can see what is done, what's finished. We have a couple different pro things that I'm not going to get into. OAuth apps. I mean, can we do it? Add a new OAuth app. Why does it say on their site that it's not allowed?

13:04 I don't feel like testing this now, but yeah, we got the redirects. So yeah, you might be able to actually do this for free, which is cool. Yeah, see there it is. It's weird that they have this under the pro edition. Oh well. And then from there of course we could go back to the home page and go and manipulate and do what we need to do. Now, real quick like I'm going to go to my proxmox and here under Windows, let's fire her up, shall we?

13:35 We're going to check out this Windows app. Again, really hope they make one for Mac OS and Linux because then this might be something I can actually use. I am not a fan of using Windows. I prefer my good old Unix back end. So here it is. I'm going to resize this window a bit so we can see it better. Really the only reason why I have Windows on here is specifically for using Rufus.

14:01 You can see I got Rufus there ready to go. And that that that's about it. Every once in a while I need a Windows installation to test something. Like in my last video when I tested that the GPU, my dedicated Windows instance is specifically for making temporary Windows instances. All right, add drive. I mean it looks pretty. Do my little Netbird proxy domain there.

14:25 And looks like we're going to authenticate it right through here. So we got some permissions. Let's Let's authorize the app. So mount the desktop client. Just going to mount directly to my files and we'll hit open here. So now we can browse for a local path. Now let's let's do something in home. Let's make a new folder called cloud r e v e. Enter. Select that folder.

14:51 Finish. And now it should it should be looking good. So if I open files Hey, very nice. So then for like the Netbird assets, I should be able to right click and then view online, sync selected now. So that should sync up and we will have a little application down here. Buttons not wanting to work. Let's dive into the settings here. So we have our drive with the links under general.

15:17 I'm not seeing an option to like automatically keep everything synced and downloaded so it's available for offline use, which is a setting I would want. So, that is Cloud Rave Cloud Rave Rave something. For me to switch out Nextcloud for something like this, they are going to need much more when it comes to client-side stuff. Windows and iPhone is definitely a good start, but we're going to need a little bit more out of it, including some more options in the settings to keep everything synced no matter what.

15:42 But, overall, when it comes to simple file management, sharing files, and things like that, the feature set is strong. And, this isn't going to be something that I'm going to use right now on a permanent basis, but it is definitely something I'm going to keep my eye on and see if they do add some of those features that I'm looking for. With all that, do check out our sponsor Incogni.

16:00 Big thank you to them for sponsoring the video. It's a great service. Get your name off of all those data broker websites. Additionally, I'm making my own little app. It's a vibe coded hunk of slop at the moment. I shouldn't be so mean. It's pretty nice. Spent like 2 weeks just making the plan files for it. But, if you're interested in helping me test it out, maybe submit some issues, that would be nice. That will also be linked down below. With all that, I do hope you have an absolutely beautiful day, and goodbye.