To @sil’s point, its not really “copy this file to all the places” that’s hard. It’s doing it with every change, its doing it right when the source is gone, but the remote end still exists. Its automatically resolving conflicts. Its that stuff that’s the FM (fucking magic) ™
I agree that the ownCloud folk seem to be working on their identity.
As for my own experiences: I use the OC calendar all the time, it is very pleasant to look at and syncs with my phone Android calendar via CalDAV.
I mount the folders via WebDAV in Thunar & PCManFM - useful also because it is where I back up my config files…
The bookmarks and task lists are frustrating in the web interface; their use of space is rather inefficient and makes it hard to get an overview. However: The OC services make for excellent data sources, and the integration options in KDE and Gnome to pull OC data are really good.
Just wondered how you were finding syncthing after using it for a while? I have several sets of data e.g. photos that I would like to be backed up from my laptop to other servers on my network. I was using BitTorrent sync, but had some problems which I suspect may have been caused by running different versions on different computers.
Since syncthing will mainly be used for data redundancy/backup , I want something that “just works” and doesn’t need constant baby sitting to make sure it’s working correctly.
Ian.
So far it’s been fine for me. I had a little back-and-forth with the developer about things I’d like it to do in the future, but it works well as far as I can tell right now.
Great. Thanks for the reply. I;ll give it a go and see how goes.
@jeremy expected more responses, so here is mine:
I’m using Owncloud since 2012. I set it up to replace Dropbox, iCloud and Evernote at once. I really liked the UI design (which was innovative in 2012), and the idea of having every service I need combined in one web interface. And at the first time it was a huge success for me. I never had any syncing issues with webdav/carddav/caldav neither on iOS, Android, Linux or Windows.
I also contributed some code to the project in 2012, and actively followed the dev-mailinglist. The problem they had at that time (in my opinion), was that all contributors were focusing on new fancy features and nobody fixed bugs which did not affect himself. They constantly changed their code structure and introduced new frameworks and APIs, which made it really hard for spare time contributors. Same with their app store. They changed the app API, and nobody provided help or guidelines what to change in existing apps. As most of them were not actively maintained by the initial contributor, they lost many good apps by doing so.
Finally I refused to upgrade completely, because it broke my whole setup every time. I’m still on 4.5, but that works flawlessly 
I dont know if stability and development philosophy have changed since then, but I highly doubt it. All in all I think they had/have very good ideas, but to few active (and experienced) contributors to maintain and evolve it at the same time. This resulted in bad quality and pissed users.
I’m still willing to give it another try, but do not have the spare time to upgrade atm.
Owncloud may not be what most of us know as “the cloud”. But a single application to share personal data easily across almost any device, without the help of google, Apple or M$, is still very nice to have. And I don’t know of another oss project which aims for the same goal/feature set and has better quality.
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