Hi. Sorry for the vague title. Nowadays I’m using multiple computers and get to need files and such from other machines pretty often. My music and photos library has also increased and it’s getting much harder to maintain with it being scattered across many machines. Basically I’m trying to have a photo library and plain files(documents, music, etc) shared across computers.
For plain files I’m thinking nfs+samba would be the best approach, but there are problems. They have speed issues, but as I can’t afford large space for all my machines I can’t keep a full rsync’d local copies everywhere too.
The photos are my bigger concern, as I’m looking for a tagging feature. A plain directory structure would be easy to sync but those tags would differ by programs… desktop programs like digikam or xnview(sadly proprietary) would work well if I didn’t need syncing, but I’m not sure if they’d work reliably with all their configs/files stored over nfs. Plus, these programs would have incompatibilities by platform and not work at all on android.
Web based solutions like Immich or NextCloud Photos appear to be pretty famous nowadays, but I’m not sure about them as well. They seem to be overkill for my purpose, and those mostly tend to be very new & i’m not too sure about their future, as they store tags and such on their own formats.
Edit: Oops, forgot to say. I have multiple servers right now, one offsite running FreeBSD, another running Devuan, and one at home running FreeBSD.
I’d love to hear how others are maintaining their system. Thanks for reading.
I use Nextcloud and Immich and would recommend both. Immich might be a bit overkill, but it’s also well maintained, feature-rich and has a large community. It’s super easy to set up and works great.
Thanks for replying. Is there a reason you use Immich over NextCloud’s NextCloud Photos? Also I’ve occasionally heard NextCloud is pretty slow, is it okay for you? You’re using their official client program to sync files?
Nextcloud Photos performs okay, but the interface is very ‘meh’. Plus, the mobile client’s sync is a little unstable. On iOS, there’s no background sync at all.
Just curious, but is there anything that provides background sync on iOS except iCloud?
Immich has image and facial recognition by default and a very neat Android app. Also it’s running in my home server, which has more power if Immich needs it. In that case I’d say software should serve one purpose and serve that good. Immich is just for picture management and does that very good. Nextcloud is a cloud and the Photos app is just a small extra that can’t compete with a full-fledged software. Nextcloud runs fine on my Raspberry Pi 4, but it’s only used by me and three friends. It’s mainly limited by your network speed and disk speed I’d say. And I’m using an external hard drive without issues.
I see. The lack of a desktop client seems to be Immich’s biggest con. I guess NextCloud wouldn’t be the best choice here. Thanks for replying.
What is the cost associated with Immich? I keep hearing about it, but I still don’t know how that really works I guess
What’s costs do you mean? It’s free and open source.