RC1 of Desktop Client 2.5 is out

We have released the first release candidate of the desktop client v2.5 - that means, we can’t find bugs anymore and we need your help to find out if there’s still something that has to be fixed before we release it!

There is still a number of open PR’s and issues we want to fix before final, currently the devs are busy with a customer project but help is of course welcome. Some less urgent things will simply go in 2.5.1.

Yes, this release has end-to-end encryption. It has been tested extensively already and shouldn’t lose any data. Interoperability with the mobile clients should also work - please, test all of it to make sure!

Note: E2E performance isn’t great

Note that the E2E is quite slow: due to the design, which requires multiple server requests per uploaded file and can only upload sequentially, making it take easily 5-10x longer than normal syncing. Note that the difference depends more on the NUMBER of files than their size. Big files don’t go much slower, but small ones do.

This means that E2E isn’t suitable for ALL your files, but that was never the goal. If you have one or two folders with very important data you want to protect from the server, it should do great.

We do intend to change this but it requires some invasive changes to the protocol and then to server and client(s) so this will take some time and it is not high priority: E2E was designed for a limited amount of files that require more protection. If you need it to work for large number of files you can of course jump in and help, or let your Nextcloud sales contact know that it is an issue for you.

Downloads

So version 2.5.0RC1 can be downloaded now:
https://download.nextcloud.com/desktop/prereleases/Windows/Nextcloud-2.5.0.61474-rc1-20181026.exe
https://download.nextcloud.com/desktop/prereleases/Mac/Nextcloud-qt5.9.2-2.5.0.20181026rc1.pkg
https://download.nextcloud.com/desktop/prereleases/Linux/Nextcloud-2.5.0.20181026-rc1-x86_64.AppImage
Look in the https://download.nextcloud.com/desktop/prereleases/ folder for other options.

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Great work!

I’m trying to have the Nix package ready as soon as 2.5 is released:

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Does it support HTTP/2?

I don’t know - pls test, it probably depends on Qt though so then it depends on the platform you build it for. The Win and Mac versions aren’t build with the latest Qt, that will probably be done for 2.5.1.

Still no implementation of Virtual Sync Drive as Google File Stream or on Owncloud client ?

I’ve tested previous beta build and i cannot connect to my cloud. Hang at Redirection. And old version of OpenSSL

No, it won’t be part of version 2.5 but there is a feature request for it with a small discussion already:
https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/184

Like all issues with beta versions and release candidates: It is better to report such issues directly to the client developers.

Let’s first finish E2E. The placeholders thing is a crappy solution (imho) and a virtual filesystem means re-implementing 90% of the client… But it is the right way to go.

Please test the RC and submit a bug report in github pls!

I would start testing if they would provide HTTP/2 for the client.

Does it now support Windows AD SSO?

E2E still doesn’t work with nginx. My github issue is still open I believe.

Link? There’s no reason it shouldn’t work, at least from the client side. Could be a server issue, though.

In theory, anything that works in the server works in the client thanks to our new login flow. Try it out to be sure and report back please :smiley:

Well, I don’t know if it works now or is supposed to work. Why not give it a try and let us know? I don’t think this will get muc priority unless we know it doesn’t work :wink: and even then it does of course also depend on demand, customer requirements and volunteers who want to work on it. Your help is welcome!

It does work with my setup (NC 14.0.3 + Apache + HTTP/2) :+1:

2 Likes

It worked in versions from several months ago. I can’t tell you the exact time it stopped working, but it was quite a few months ago.

Where can I officially report back bugs / observations I made?

Got it on my own: https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues

1 Like

Updated to this RC1 build, no more problem with the HANG at Redirecting. But still with an old version of OpenSSL.