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Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

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Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#221

Post by cloudfudge »

fluoridation wrote: post #186
riskable wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no: There's still a rather large latency improvement even when you're using plain HTTP (not that you should go without encryption). I was very curious so I asked AI to explain why websockets would have such lower latency than regular HTTP and it gave some (uncited, but logical) reasons: Once a WebSocket is open, each message avoids several sources of delay that an HTTP request can hit—especially on mobile. Th…

Wow. Talk about inefficiency. It just said the same thing I did, but using twenty times as many characters. >Yes and no: There's still a rather large latency improvement even when you're using plain HTTP (not that you should go without encryption). Of course. An unencrypted HTTP request takes a single roundtrip to complete. The client sends the request and receives the response. The only additional cost is to set up…

Yes and no. Have you considered that the problem is that a TLS handshake takes more than one round trip to complete?

/s

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#222

Post by tripflag »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #32

I've played around with many self-hosted file manager apps. My first one was Ajaxplorer which then became Pydio. I really liked Pydio but didn't stick with it because it was too slow. I briefly played with Nextcloud but didn't stick with it either. Eventually I ran into FileRun and loved it, even though it wasn't completely open source. FileRun is fast, worked on both desktop and mobile via browser nicely, and I neve…

> I also miss Filerun's "Request a file" feature which worked very nicely if you just wanted someone to upload a file to you and then be done.

With the disclaimer that I've never used Filerun, I think this can be replicated with copyparty by means of the "shares" feature (--shr). That way, you can create a temporary link for other people to upload to, without granting access to browse or download existing files. It works like this: https://a.ocv.me/pub/demo/#gf-bb96d8ba&t=13:44

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#223

Post by binary132 »

snovv_crash wrote: post #200
riskable wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that's the thing: "on page load". A one-time expense! If you're using modern page routing, "loading a new URL" isn't actually loading a new page... The client is just simulating it via your router/framework by updating the page URL and adding an entry to the history. Also, 15MB of JS is nothing on modern "low end devices". Even an old, $5 Raspberry Pi 2 won't flinch at that and anything slower than that... isn't…

When you write code with this mentality it makes my modern CPU with 16 cores at 4HGz and 64GB of RAM feel like a Pentium 3 running at 900MHz with 512MB of RAM. Please don't.

THANK YOU

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#224

Post by Dylan16807 »

lompad wrote: post #38
palata wrote: post #27

I would love to like Nextcloud, it's pretty great that it does exist. Just that makes it better than... well everything else I haven't found. What frustrates me is that it looks like it works, but once in a while it breaks in a way that is pretty much irreparable (or at least not in a practical way). I want to run an iOS/Android app that backs up images on my server. I tried the iOS app and when it works, it's cool.…

Recently people built a super-lightweigt alternative, named copyparty[0]. To me that looks like it does everything people tend to need without all the bloat. [0]: https://github.com/9001/copyparty

> everything people tend to need

> NOTE: full bidirectional sync, like what nextcloud and syncthing does, will never be supported! Only single-direction sync (server-to-client, or client-to-server) is possible with copyparty

Is sync not the primary use of nextcloud?

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#225

Post by tripflag »

t_mann wrote: post #160
RiverCrochet wrote: post #32

I've played around with many self-hosted file manager apps. My first one was Ajaxplorer which then became Pydio. I really liked Pydio but didn't stick with it because it was too slow. I briefly played with Nextcloud but didn't stick with it either. Eventually I ran into FileRun and loved it, even though it wasn't completely open source. FileRun is fast, worked on both desktop and mobile via browser nicely, and I neve…

Copyparty can't (and doesn't want to) replace Nextcloud for many use cases because it supports one-way sync only. The readme is pretty clear about that. I'm toying with the idea of combining it with Syncthing (for all those devices where I don't want to do a full sync), does anybody have experience with that? I've seen some posts that it can lead to extreme CPU usage when combined with other tools that read/write/ind…

Combining copyparty with Syncthing is not something I have tested extensively, but I know people are doing this, and I have yet to hear about any related issues. It's also a usecase I want to support, so if you /do/ hit any issues, please give word! I've briefly checked how Syncthing handles the symlink-based file deduplication, and it seemed to work just fine.

The only precaution I can think of is that copyparty's .hist folder should probably not be synced between devices. So if you intend to share an entire copyparty volume, or a folder which contains a copyparty volume, then you could use the `--hist` global-option or `hist` volflag to put it somewhere else.

As for high CPU usage, this would arise from copyparty deciding to reindex a file when it detects that the file has been modified. This shouldn't be a concern unless you point it at a folder which has continuously modifying files, such as a file that is currently being downloaded or otherwise slowly written to.

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#226

Post by cortesoft »

palata wrote: post #220
cortesoft wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love immich, too, but I have also ran into a lot of issues with syncing large libraries. The iPhone app will just hang sometimes.

Does it recover though, or do you end up in situations where your setup is essentially broken? Like if I backup photos from iOS, then remove a subset of those from iOS to make space on the phone (but obviously I want to keep them on the cloud), and later the mobile app gets out of sync, I don't want to end up in a situation where some photos are on iOS, some on the cloud, but none of the devices has everything, and I…

It won't recover unless I do something... sometimes just quitting the iPhone app and then toggling enabling backups works, but not always. I had to completely delete and reinstall the app once to get it to work, and had to resync all 45000 images/videos I had.

I have had the server itself fail in strange ways where I had to restart it. I had to do a full fresh install once when it got hopelessly confused and I was getting database errors saying records either existed when they shouldn't or didn't exist when they should.

I think I am a pretty skilled sysadmin for these types of things, having both designed and administered very large distributed systems for two decades now, but maybe I am doing things wrong, but I think there are just some gotchas still with the project.

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#227

Post by mxuribe »

jw_cook wrote: post #154

The article mentions Vikunja as an alternative to Nextcloud Tasks, and I can give it a solid recommendation as well. I wanted a self-hosted task management app with some lightweight features for organizing tasks into projects, ideally with a kanban view, but without a full-blown PM feature set. I tried just about every task management app out there, and Vikunja was the only one that ticked all the boxes for me. Some…

I know this post is more about nextcloud...but can i just say this one feature from Vikunja "...export task summaries and comments..." sounds great!!! One of the features i seek out when i look for a task, project management software is the ability to easily and comprehensivelt provide for nice exports, and that said exports *include comments*!!

Either apps lack such an export, or its very minimal, or it includes lots of things, except comments...Sometimes an app might have a REST api, and I'd need to build something non-trivial to start pulling out the comments, etc. I feel like its silly in this day and age.

My desire for comments to be included in exports is for local search...but also because i use comments for sort of thinking aloud, sort of like an inline task journaling...and when comments are lacking, it sucks!

In fact, when i hear folks suggest to simply stop using such apps and merely embrace the text file todo approach, they cite their having full access to comments as a feature...and, i can't dispute their claim! But barely any non-text-based apps highlight the inclusion of comments. So, i have to ask: is it just me (who doesn't use a text-based todo workflow), and then all other folks who *do use* a text-based tdo flow, who actually care about access to comments!?!

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#229

Post by bityard »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #53

I don't doubt that large amounts of javascript can often cause issues but even when cached NextCloud feels sluggish. When I look at just the network tab of a refresh of the calendar page it does 124 network calls, 31 of which aren't cached. it seems to be making a call per calendar each of which is over 30ms. So that stacks up the more calendars you have(and you have a number by default like contact birthdays). The J…

The thing that kills me is that Nextcloud had an _amazing_ calendar a few years ago. It was way better than anything else I have used. (And I tried a lot, even the calendar add-on for Thunderbird. Which may or may not be built in these days, I can't keep track.)

Then at some point the Nextcloud calendar was "redesigned" and now it's completely terrible. Aesthetically, it looks like it was designed for toddlers. Functionally, adding and editing events is flat out painful. Trying to specify a time range for an event is weird and frustrating. It's better than not having a calendar, but only just.

There are plenty of open source calendar _servers_, but no good open source web-based calendars that I have been able to find.

Re: Why Nextcloud feels slow to use

#230

Post by aeldidi »

Nextcloud is something I have a somewhat love-hate relationship with. On one hand, I've used Nextcloud for ~7 years to backup and provide access to all of my family's photos. We can look at our family pictures and memories from any computer, and it's all private and runs mostly without any headaches.

On the other hand, Nextcloud is so far from being something like Google Docs, and I would never recommend it as a general replacement to someone who can't tolerate "jank", for lack of a better word. There are so many small papercuts you'll notice when using it as a power user. Right off the top of my head, uploading large files is finicky, and no amount of web server config tinkering gets it to always work; thumbnail loading is always spotty, and it's significantly slower than it needs to be (I'm talking orders of magnitude).

With all that said, I'm so grateful for Nextcloud since I don't have a replacement, and I would prefer not having all our baby and vacation pictures feeding some big corporation's AI. We really ought to have a safe, private place to store files in 2025 that the average person can wrap their head around. I only wish my family took better advantage of it, since I'm essentially providing them with unlimited storage.

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