December PLUG Meeting Notes: Nextcloud

[ssfc72]

The PLUG meeting was very enjoyable. We had good attendance with William coming from Toronto and Glen from Oshawa able to make it.
Jason did a very nice job showing off NextCloud and there was interest shown in it.
The room projector wasn't working but I had my pico projector for projecting the presentation onto the meeting room screen.
Mike tried to do his Dex presentation but I believe he forgot to bring a bluetooth mouse to work with his Samsung phone, so he was unable to navigate the screen on the phone. Hopefully Mike might be able to do his demo at the January PLUG meeting.
After the demos we had coffee, pop, and snacks to eat and discuss everything from radar to rocketships. :-)
We didn't break up until after 10 pm.

[fox]

Small correction. Mike didn't try to do a DeX presentation; he tried to see if it would work on the equipment in that room. The DeX presentation will be at one of our upcoming meetings.

[buster]

Sorry I missed the meeting, but it was unavoidable. Sounds as if it was a pleasant evening.

[Jason]

Thanks for the notes on the meeting, Bill. And thanks for everyone making. I was pretty stressed out but I'm glad the presentation was helpful or at least interesting.

[Jason]

Attached is the slideshow that I used (in ODP format) and a text file containing the info outlined below:

Setup Nextcloud server on Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 (more for testing Nextcloud than actual serious use because of limited RAM)
https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-nextcloud-server/

Download and link to Installation instructions (Ubuntu 18.04 recommended for easiest install using script that does everything)
https://nextcloud.com/install/#instructions-server
- Note that despite the instructions saying it will run on 512 MB RAM, you should have 2 GB RAM or more- actual requirements will vary depending on what you do with it- you can also install Ubuntu 18.04 on the Raspberry Pi by using the SD card image provided at the Ubuntu site

These 10 Nextcloud Apps will let you DITCH Google for GOOD! (didn't get to show this)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rwr9xuiCRs

[ssfc72]

Another note would be, for your suggestion that people who have problems with frequent power outages at their home, might want to consider paying  a small monthly fee for a remote hosting service for their Nextcloud.service.

[Jason]

Another note would be, for your suggestion that people who have problems with frequent power outages at their home, might want to consider paying  a small monthly fee for a remote hosting service for their Nextcloud.service.

That's a good point. You can get cheap hosting for $5-15 CAD/month. The cheaper ones mean you get a base install of an OS and you're responsible for all setup but you also get entire control. So if you wanted a webserver, you'd have to install the LAMP setup yourself and configure it and you'd have to do updates.
The more expensive ones in that range give you graphical setup tools although you have less control over your space but they handle updates and setting up a webserver is super easy and possibly Nextcloud - at least it won't be harder than a cheap host with shell access and easier for other things like setting up mail.

Hosting it from home has the benefits of it being free (other than electricity cost) and a lot more storage (and likely memory) but you have the limitations you noted above as well as your outside IP address changing from time to time. You can setup a dynamic IP service that will run a client and change your domain records to point to the new IP but it's kind of pointless to go through that extra work to avoid $5/month.

[fox]

Hmmm. I have a 2009 Mac mini sitting around doing nothing, and it has 4gb RAM. Possible NextCloud server? It runs Ubuntu 18.04 nicely.

[Jason]

Hmmm. I have a 2009 Mac mini sitting around doing nothing, and it has 4gb RAM. Possible NextCloud server? It runs Ubuntu 18.04 nicely.

That sounds like it would probably be fine.