Trying ownCloud he Dropbox free

A little over two years that the KDE people announced a project called ownCloud , a service of copying and synchronizing files "in the cloud" service based on a LAMP on the server and use csync on the client side . The result is that anyone can set up their own file synchronization service like Dropbox and SugarSync, but space constraints and / or traffic (beyond what you let your own server or hosting service) and without considering dilemmas Privacy. The development has been rapid (two months ago that came to light version 3 server and one of the principal client) and really worth a try and check it out.

The look really "powerful" of ownCloud is set up your own service, but if you have no means or prefer to start by assessing whether you like it simply, you can do so through an external provider , who already is. There are payment service and others who, like Dropbox and the like, offer a free entry form and additional options that you have to pay (freemiun they call it there). Owncube offers five gigabytes of free space and GetFreeCloud offers six. I advise you to start by Owncube since been updated since the 3.0.2 version, and even above, the 3.0.1 which is used in GetFreeCloud, there are a couple of vulnerabilities that can easily be exploited by Metasploit.

Create an account in either service is easy: name, password, email and ready. Only that you already have a storage service with a convenient web interface.

But if you really want to take advantage of the automatic synchronization of files between your computer and the server and / or between computers, you need to settle a client software . In the above link you have binaries available for Windows and major Linux distributions . The Mac and Android are still under development and are not available. For distributions "marginal" of Linux you have the sources and compile detailed instructions , although I imagine that most of them will have packages ready more or less official. I'm using Chakra at the moment (and very happy, and I'll talk about that another time) and the corresponding PKGBUILD is available here .

Once we have installed an icon available in the system tray context menu with a simple: Set option lets you change the data connection to the sync server and the Add Folder option allows you to add a new directory service. Then we have an entry for each directory that is being synchronized which opens directly the default file manager in the local directory and the option to close the service (Quit). Pressing the left button on the icon, instead of this menu will open a window with information about the synchronization status of the directories and the ability to elmininarlos (the service, not delete), add new, temporarily stop service in one of them or return to resume, etc..

The functionality of "Add Directory" is where, perhaps, appreciate better the difference in the philosophy of use compared to Dropbox, perhaps, is its most popular competitor. Here there is no single directory synchronization but add them individually although they are in different parts of your file system. In Dropbox usually resolve the issue (at least under Linux) using symbolic links but this method is far more flexible and comfortable. We can also synchronize a particular directory not only against the server that we configured "in the cloud" but against another local directory or against any other URL where, logically, we must have write access. This opens up 1001 possibilities to safeguard our data.

Returning to the web interface, this has some very useful utilities that can be seen in the menu links on the left: bookmarks, calendars, contacts and two entries called Music & Media where, automatically and in a similar way as does Android, are collected entries to these files regardless of the directory where they are. Oh, and the option to have a music player and all

I have found no way to synchronize your calendar or bookmarks with other external services and contacts should be synchronized with GMail through an existing option in the Settings menu (the gear that appears at the bottom left) but I failed to make it work.

For friends of the command line, there is an optional client administration console called owncloud-admin . The configuration files, at least in my distribution, are in the $ HOME / .local / share / data / ownCloud / Here we take the unpleasant surprise of the user and password for our synchronization server are stored in clear owncloud.cfg within the file. When installing the client asks us whether we want this not be saved and we ask on every boot but, hey, it would be desirable to further integration with kwallet, service password management KDE itself.

It is clear that the development still has many details to polish and improve. I have had problems during testing assumptions mismatches between client and server times (which have been addressed by removing the synchronization and re-creating, then it is another thing ...) and I miss you synchronize the contents of symbolic links in the local computer (which does not). Miss is also available on Dropbox options for some time (for example, the recovery of previous versions of a file). Also desirable, for that matter, could synchronize multiple folders from different servers owncloud. And, of course, mobile clients should be available soon if you want the service from competing with the big boys. But input, and in my opinion, has great potential and is the first service of its kind truly free (and not as Ubuntu One ). OpenSuse is particularly involved in it forward, so hopefully that will continue to evolve rapidly.

And in another entry soon, we will like you to build your own server owncloud service.

UPDATE: Uppps! A few minutes after writing this I learn that the client is now available for Android .