Appreciation for a job well done

I actually signed up for the forum for one reason only: to give some credit where credit is due for a job well done. This is an amazing program, and I’m actually surprised I only found out about this 2 days ago. I was actually trying to find a non-Google and non-Microsoft calendar provider, and then discovered NextCloud. I installed the VM appliance on my Windows machine using Virtualbox, and have since migrated my local phone calendar to it, and done a little digging into the guts of the appliance, discovering in the process how rusty my Linux has gotten, and have been seriously impressed with the attention to detail that went into this. Kudos for making ZFS the norm for the data partition, and for making such a slick, well-executed appliance that I could just import and go. I don’t foresee NextCloud ever not being a part of my life, and I can see where it could become a greater part of my life in the future. This is a great tool. I am beyond impressed. Thank you for making this freely available to all. I plan to donate what I save from not needing to subscribe to a service for calendar sync as a thanks. Have a great day!

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Nice and welcome. There is a #praise category that your post would fit into as well!

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@jospoortvliet ,sorry to disturb, but maybe you could show this to the developers !!! :slight_smile:

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WOW! Thanks a million times! :heart: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

It’s really nice to know what the hours you put in actually makes difference!

The goal with the VM is to make it as easy as possible to install and maintain Nextcloud, well-crafted by experienced sysadmins so that the end-user don’t have to spend hours searching for info online on how to install things. This is a proof to me that we kind of succeded, and I’m really really grateful for such feedback!

cc @szaimen (co-maintaner of the VM) @rakekniven (just FYI) :smile:

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There’s no question that you succeeded. I don’t think it’s so easy that every Joe and Jane who don’t know anything about how computers work can make it work, but that’s not really your target audience. You made it so that a techy person can deploy this and have something working quickly, and with a great result. Well done!

Since you’ve taken the time to reply here, I’m curious why you chose PostgreSQL over some of the better-known options. It’s a little different, but I’m getting used to it. I was initially puzzled why none of the My/Maria commands for manipulating the DB worked, so I had to look at what you actually used. :slight_smile: It’s the only deviation you made from an otherwise very standard LAMP stack, so I’m betting you had a good reason, and if you have a second to quickly explain why you chose it, I’d love to hear it.

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Then I have a little more to improve. Joe and Jane should be able to do this - and I actually tested on my own Mom with good results. :smiley:

why you chose PostgreSQL

The main reason is here:

In short, PostgreSQL is in my (extensive) testing more stable. Its also more advanced, but in an easy way. By switching to PostgreSQL I could skip using passwords, and get (what MySQL calls) utf8mb4 without doing any modifications. Above that I believe it’s faster, at least in my opinion it feels snappier on all the servers I’ve compared.

If you are tech savvy though, PostgreSQL offers a wide range of options to fine tune it just to your liking, even if the defaults are good enough for moderate use. There are multiple automated tuning software you can use as well.

Basically, PostgreSQL is far better than anything starting with My… or Maria… :smiley:

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Let me rephrase Joe and Jane a little; most of them could figure out how to install VirtualBox and import the OVA, and the default options will make a working environment, which can then be used and accessed locally. However, without knowing a little about NAT and firewalls, they’ll be limited to using it in their home, and without a little knowledge of Linux, making a backup will be limited to shutting down the VM and copying the disk images to somewhere else…which works, of course, but isn’t as slick as can be done with scripting and such.

My initial remark stemmed from the fact that I consider some of “make it work” to include things outside the scope of what the NC VM is and can do. Deploying the VM image itself and getting to a usable server could not have been easier.

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:rocket:

I agree with you 100%.

What I was referring to was how easy it is to install in general (as in the first quite), but also apps like e.g: Collabora, OnlyOffice, Talk, Full text Search and other apps that otherwise might require a bit of digging. With the VM you simply run the menu script, choose what you want and watch magic happen in front of your eyes hehe. :slight_smile:

Thanks again Jason, and just ping me if you have any questions!

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Autumn just arrived in Sweden. It’s dark outside, but this makes me light up a bit. :slight_smile:

I would like to let the entire nextcloud team know how much I appreciate the truely excellent work that you have done building and improving a truely fantastic system. I’ve built and managed numerous nextcloud instances for a number of years now and in every single case I’ve never had a data loss event or issue that couldn’t be resolved with in ten miutes of browsing this forum.

Please keep up all the good work you guys are doing.

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