Shutting down Ubuntu One file services • Hacker News Board

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#41

Post by IgorPartola » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:38 PM UTC

I for one (no pun intended) actually liked Ubuntu One. In the age where the DropBox installer for Ubuntu was funky and running it headless involved downloading a Python script and running it in a screen session Ubuntu One provided a much better experience.

That said, I was never one to pay for DropBox or Ubuntu One because their pricing was just a little too expensive. The free tier got me enough space to share a few random files, and if I needed more than a few GB's, I've got my own infrastructure for that.

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#42

Post by voyou » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:40 PM UTC

shrikant wrote: post #34

I was (and still am) honestly baffled that Canonical never went about building and marketing Ubuntu One as a home directory backup service. Maybe automatically encrypt and backup all text files in the home directory by default, and for free. Restore encrypted backup from Ubuntu One every time a user does a reinstall or upgrade. Charge users if they want to throw in media files or binaries.

The standard Ubuntu install includes Deja Dup, which does encrypted backups to Ubuntu One. I don't remember ever seeing much marketing of this feature from Canonical, though.

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#43

Post by claudius » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:41 PM UTC

reidrac wrote: post #36

rkalla wrote: post #30

Did the timelines seem awfully aggressive to anyone? (June 1 service stops, July 31 all data is erased) For a service that we were suppose to be syncing our lives to, that seems like a really abrupt, customer unfriendly ramp-down. I would have expected something more like: 1. April 1 - no new accounts. 2. May 1 - can no longer add files to your existing account. 3. May - Dec - nagged/reminded constantly to pull your…

Apparently that's for free users, for annual subscribers "[...] the service will remain available until 1 June and data available for a further two months". Not that it changes things a lot, but two months is definitely better than one. They probably have data to back their decision. EDIT: I misread the post, there's not difference. Sorry for the noise.

1 June through 31 July is two months?

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#44

Post by izacus » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:41 PM UTC

voyou wrote: post #42

shrikant wrote: post #34

I was (and still am) honestly baffled that Canonical never went about building and marketing Ubuntu One as a home directory backup service. Maybe automatically encrypt and backup all text files in the home directory by default, and for free. Restore encrypted backup from Ubuntu One every time a user does a reinstall or upgrade. Charge users if they want to throw in media files or binaries.

The standard Ubuntu install includes Deja Dup, which does encrypted backups to Ubuntu One. I don't remember ever seeing much marketing of this feature from Canonical, though.

Deja-Dup however was rather buggy... for my machines it corrupted all backups I had and I had to restore data from duplicitys broken indexes for at least two more people.

A rather bad track record for software that is there to prevent you from losing data :/

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#45

Post by amolgupta » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:41 PM UTC

this is sad. I used ubuntu one services for a while and also cloned the music app code to understand android development once.

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#46

Post by keithpeter » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:44 PM UTC

claudius wrote: post #43

reidrac wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently that's for free users, for annual subscribers "[...] the service will remain available until 1 June and data available for a further two months". Not that it changes things a lot, but two months is definitely better than one. They probably have data to back their decision. EDIT: I misread the post, there's not difference. Sorry for the noise.

1 June through 31 July is two months?

61 days inclusive. I imagine the sync client will be producing a countdown in notification area and generally nagging the user each day.

Disclaimer: not an Ubuntu One user.

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#47

Post by derekp7 » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:44 PM UTC

Wouldn't it be better if they partnered with someone like DropBox to provide a migration path? Possibly a transparent migration path? Then convert Ubuntu One to a relabeled version of DropBox.

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#48

Post by spektom » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:45 PM UTC

Well... this is sad. I used to store my config files like .vimrc, vim/, .screenrc etc. in Ubuntu One.

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#49

Post by reidrac » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:45 PM UTC

claudius wrote: post #43

reidrac wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently that's for free users, for annual subscribers "[...] the service will remain available until 1 June and data available for a further two months". Not that it changes things a lot, but two months is definitely better than one. They probably have data to back their decision. EDIT: I misread the post, there's not difference. Sorry for the noise.

1 June through 31 July is two months?

You're right, thanks. I misread the blog post.

Re: Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

#50

Post by gtaylor » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:45 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #35

ekianjo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and honestly the setup in early versions was horrible. I tried so many times to make it work and gave up in the end. They shouldn't have released it so early back then when it was obviously not production ready.

This approach to things is what killed Ubuntu (yes, killed, not is killing). See PulseAudio, Unity, etc

Why does PulseAudio have anything to do with Ubuntu? AFAIK, there is no relation between the two, other than the fact that Ubuntu offers PulseAudio (along with almost every other distro).