Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
I looked at Mega - looks OK. 15GB free (50GB is good for 180 days only). But run by Kim Dot Kom - I'm sure he can be trusted... but if I have another choice... I'll go for that.
tonido.com - free unlimited??
Sounds too good?
What others?
BIGGEST concern: NOT having code hog my system.
Would love if there was a 'non auto sync' - where I manually sync.
Why not self-host? You can get a Raspberry Pi for a low price and plug a 16GB USB stick into it and you're set using any number of "cloud" packages or, my preference, SFTP. If you want fancier than EXT4, you can use several sticks and do ZFS for your underlying file system. Though that probably means FreeBSD as the host instead of Raspbian.
If your ISP does not provide an external IP address you can NAT punch by setting up your site as an onion service or just hire a VPS. A VPS would be about 5 EUR per month or less if you look around a bit at ones from Vultr, Scaleway, Linode, OVH, or similar.
self hosting... didn't ever think of.
having storage somewhere else in the cloud... you have some reassurance that you can retrieve should you need to.
google drive - i read up about this...
and from what i read there is no official 'linux google drive' yet?
everything is a work around?
any others worth considering? there seem to be quite a few when i googled.
i just wanted to choose something that others recommended.
thanks.
Last edited by enginestar; 06-04-2018 at 08:52 PM.
self hosting... didn't ever think of.
having storage somewhere else in the cloud... you have some reassurance that you can retrieve should you need to.
Only if you find marketing lies reassuring. Some do. The "cloud" providers like to keep the reports problems low visibility and out of the press but yet the problems abound.
Further, they are pretty much all going TLS over HTTP and as you know the certificate hierarchy is easy to mess with and thus your communictions with the "cloud" provider inherently insecure.
"cloud" is not an alternative to backup unless you go with something complex like Tarsnap, and even then it only counts as a single copy.
i wanted to have on many folders. and to be able to use and never think about worrying about syncing.
Then you do not want public cloud storage, it does not work like that. You need to run a process to sync, and then be able to monitor that process to ensure that your sync is current, not what you need. What you need is your OWN private cloud storage, or perhaps just NAS.
The 'pie' trick mentioned above would serve, or a PC with large drives and something like FreeNAS.
Just be aware that you are then responsible for your own backups of that NAS.
Basically, ALL of the solutions for Linux that are not Linux based are work-arounds. But then, nearly everything that Linux does better than Windows that is used on a Windows domain is a work-around. The fact that a Linux work-around is often better than the Windows service equivalent is just bonus.
about self-hosting:
it's the best, but i wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't ready for setting it up themselves.
If we narrow that to just SFTP then I'd say it's about as easy to set up as the hyped "cloud" services but that SFTP is much easier to interact with than HTTPS-based services especially from GNU/Linux because the file manager supports it out of the box.
Here's my well-padded time estimate for a beginner for self-hosting from SOHO location:
15 min research port forwarding and verify there is an external IP address
15 min research and sign up for a dynamic DNS service
30 min research and order a Raspberry Pi plus a USB stick
30 min install Raspbian-lite, turn on OpenSSH
30 min learn about keys and turn off passwords
15 min turn on port forwarding
30 min beer o'clock
However, that is dependent on an external IP address. If none is available, then you can set up an Onion service or try a VPS instead.
For a VPS it would be shorter, with potentially a lot less privacy but no less so than a regular "cloud" service:
30 min Choose and subscribe to a VPS provider
15 min Get system spun up and OpenSSH activated
30 min learn about keys and turn off passwords
30 min beer o'clock
For OS X there are specialized clients like FileZilla and CyberDuck. For legacy operating systems, there is FileZilla and WinSCP. But, again, for GNU/Linux the file managers support SFTP out of the box.
I looked at Mega - looks OK. 15GB free (50GB is good for 180 days only). But run by Kim Dot Kom - I'm sure he can be trusted...
If you think you can trust dropbox more than mega, perhaps you don't know about this? http://www.drop-dropbox.com/
SpiderOak used to be a Dropbox alternative, but it's been a couple of years since I'm not using it anymore and their website only displays paid plans nowadays.
Wuala used to be another alternative but it looks like it is no more.
Your best option is probably self-hosting something like owncloud/nextcloud or syncthing. Pretty much all free space service providers are Big Brother honeypots.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.