Why Nextcloud ?
Opensource Storage Platform
Nextcloud is a 100% opensource platform that led you to store your personal files, images/videos, notes through native applications. Beyond the storage of multimedia files, it includes several applications that create a technological ecosystem.
Good competitor
To make it short, he offers the main services of a Google Drive or a Dropbox, except that we encrypt all of our data on our server while keeping control of those latter, then we avoid populating public provider databases 😉. More information about the encryption method here.
We can notice on this comparative table that Nextcloud fits all type of needs compared to other public/private providers.
Choice
If you don’t want to maintain your own self-hosted cloud, you have the option of subscribing to a Nextcloud provider that will respect GDPR compliance. They have been carefully chosen by the official Nextcloud team but the latter does not vouch for the services offered by these providers.
The best, in my opinion, is to host your Nextcloud server yourself.
Application Presentation
Here is an overview of my application disposition:
Files
The file explorer, which is the main tool for managing all our data on our server. Here, everything is centralized and the other applications use those data to feed their content (i.e: I add *.mp3 files in my Music folder which will be synchronized with the Music application).
Of course, we have the option to share files:
- between users of the same Nextcloud instance
- through generated public links from the instance
Notes
This application allows you to simply take notes on a very classic way, I use the Markdown syntax.
Or you can take notes with Mind Mapping method by installing the Nextcloud extension:
Deck
Who does the job of a Trello, which is to to organize tasks in Kanban style by creating cards on a virtual board.
Calendar
Which, as its name suggests, is a calendar where you can add external calendars and also, tasks that were inserted into the Deck application with a due date. On Android, I use the couple of applications: Etar / DAVx. [Etar] (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ws.xsoh.etar&hl=fr&gl=US) is an opensource calendar where we can add our personal calendar and [DAVx] ( https://www.davx5.com/) allows the synchronization of the Nextcloud calendar with an application like Etar, it is the intermediary between the two.
Talk
This application allows us to make audio/video calls over IP Voice with integrated Chat + Screen sharing. Very efficient and practical, it can also be an alternative to centralized messaging applications like [Signal] (https://www.signal.org/) or [Telegram] (https://telegram.org/), for the enthusiast of security and opensource world 😄.
Appointments
This application manages appointments according to the availabilities that you insert. It pairs with the Nextcloud calender.
I show you in a few clicks how to add time slots to the calendar:
Nextcloud Deployment
Hosting
Here is my winning team:
- Hardware: Hetzner
- Operating System: Debian
- HTTP Server: Apache2
- Domain Name: Route53 service from Amazon Web Services
Installation
Concerning the installation part, which is quite simple, I refer you to the official Nextcloud documentation here.
Conclusion
These tools are very useful to me on a daily basis, I use them both personally and professionally. Other applications are available in the Nextcloud catalog that I haven’t tried yet.
In writing this short article, I am trying at best to make as many people as possible aware of the importance of our confidentiality. The goal is not to demonize Google or other public cloud providers, we must recognize that they are very good at what they do but they do not respect the privacy of their users.