Why does the Nextcloud Windows client require a restart each update?

đŸ“± Desktop & mobile clients đŸ’» Desktop
16

It’s really annoying and makes me look for other solutions. Nextcloud has become the laughing stock of storage solutions, I am really disappointed that it is the only one that is mature enough on the open source market to “compete” with paid solutions.

1 Like
17

Well, in this case, the developers have clearly failed in their duty to ensure that no user will ever be disappointed or annoyed by using their software, which of course must be provided completely free of charge and cover every conceivable use case.

I mean, where would we end up if everyone could just develop software and give it away for free without it meeting all the needs and expectations of every possible user?

18

Hmm
 to play devil’s advocate here but if you want to take part in the open source market, then you can’t be surprised if people complain even when they’re using the free version or not paying for support. Plus Nextcloud have Enterprise versions that a very much not free. I assume that paying clients have the same problem with the client? There have been three updates in about a month.

And very often when people express dismay like this, it’s because they really want the product to succeed and thrive but feel that some annoying faults let down what is overall a very good product. I’m also an advocate of Mikrotik network equipment. RouterOS is incredibly powerful and should rule the world. But it doesn’t.

The stability over the past releases does appear to be lower than usual. There has just been another release today. I’m assuming this very frequent release schedule and stability are not unconnected. So whilst we’re in gripe mode, why are the release notes so difficult to understand?

https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/releases

I also use another great bit of open source: ShareX. It recently had a major release and I took the time to read it’s release notes:

https://getsharex.com/changelog

They’re IMO written in a much more user friendly manner. Github Nextcloud tickets are far too technical. Where they fail is that they explain the fix and not what bug they were fixing. I’ve got a client who has had horrible faults over the last month and I hoped I’d see a line that said “Fixed bug where Nextclient client stops responding”.

19

But you can see the difference between constructive criticism and a two-sentence post from someone who registered specifically to express their disappointment without elaborating on why they feel that way?

That was of course a rhetorical question, I know you can, just compare your posts with the one you’re playing devil’s advocate for :wink:

And this has nothing to do with open source, it has to do with the way you communicate in general. If you just throw out a one-liner without context or reason, just to express your frustration, you should expect a sarcastic response at best, because frankly I don’t find such posts worth responding to at all, but sometimes I just can’t help it :wink:

Of course I am aware that in our neo-capitalist world you can get a lot of free coffee for this kind of bad communication. But in the context of OSS, this strategy won’t work, because capitalist levers cannot be applied, since there is no capital involved, unless you have a support contract or contribute to the project in some other way. And that’s a good thing, imho. :slight_smile:

1 Like
20

And here’s my response to your actual post because, as I said, it’s constructive, meaning it addresses specific issues and provides examples of how those issues could be improved :slight_smile:

I think it’s more of a strategy driven by a sense of entitlement, which I really hate in today’s world. But who can tell from the two sentences that were posted!?

I guess you are referring to the desktop client, specifically the Windows client
?

I really can’t say much negative about the desktop client, as I’ve never experienced most of the issues discussed here in the forums. However, I’m just a home user running it on Linux (currently Fedora, previously Arch and Ubuntu), I don’t use Virtual Files, and I don’t have an enterprise like environment, just two users, no group folders, no external storage etc


I think that’s a valid point, and I wish there were real curated changelogs for sysadmins, with advice on how to deal with breaking changes etc. At the moment the only options we have are a list of merged pull requests and occassional marketing posts on nextcloud.com. :wink:

However, Nextcloud is also a much larger and more complex project than searx, and it would probably be a full-time job to somehow “readactively” process all the changelogs of the server and the “featured” apps, plus desktop clients, plus the mobile app etc


And I suppose there also must be some exclusive benefits left for the paying customers. I don’t know if they get better changelogs (I honestly doubt it :wink: ) but I guess they get more specialized support and consulting if they run into issues.

21

Latest version - causes Windows Explorer to crash on right-click on all Windows 10 systems as far as I can tell:

https://help.nextcloud.com/t/desktop-app-causing-windows-explorer-to-crash

This level of poor quality is really going to hurt :frowning:

22

Yeah, what can I say, I saw this thread too, and I agree that major bugs like this should definitely be caught before the software is released, especially since the desktop client is an application meant to be installed and maintained by end users, with auto-updates enabled by default.

23

I personally think the release schedule is too aggressive. Which makes this restart issue even more painful.

24

I shut down my PC every night. But okay, I get it, reboots are a nightmare because imagine, having to grab a coffee at the office without bringing your laptop because it’s rebooting, or having to boot up your PC and open all the applications first if you want to look important at Starbucks :wink:

Sorry, couldn’t help it :wink:

1 Like
25

Did (Linux) people not make fun of Windows because every update required a reboot?
The funny bit is: the installation app tells you that it will close explorer in order to avoid the restart and in the end asks you to restart. :upside_down_face:

Restarts are annoying in times of tablets and smartphones and hibernate. Nextcloud client is more Windows 98 in that regard.

26

Yeah, and I’ve always found these jokes a bit silly, even as a Linux user, because let’s be honest, at least after upgrades that involve a lot of system packages, a reboot is usually quicker and easier than having to manually restart all the services and applications involved.

And yes, there are tools like needrestart and kernel live patching, but even if you use them, you should still do a planned reboot from time to time.

So even in 2024, no system will run forever without rebooting, and even Android and iOS require reboots for system updates.

1 Like
27

For me on Windows the Windows Subsystem for Linux manages to push the CPUs to 100% after some time, sometimes it helps to restart just WSL, sometimes it needs a restart. If Windows updates stuff in the background, it can start to behave a bit strangely, that is a sign that you need to restart.

I’m not expert enough to tell, if there is a solution or if there is a simple solution to that issue. Would you ask a developer to try to solve this during a month? Is this enough? Or would you prefer other issues to be solved first?
Unfortunately, the current process is not very transparent in public, so we can only suppose that they have done reasonable choices, especially since the desktop client is used by their enterprise customers as well.

28

True. The nextcloud client however, is not a system but just an app and is compared with apps of the same kind. Thus the same expectations and technical possibilities apply. Hence I can understand users that ask, why something which works for other apps with the same functionality, does not for the nextcloud app.

One thing I find confusing is that if you install the nextcloud app, windows asks for permission to install a package. The package name for most apps includes the app name, i.e. the user can identify easily that the package is the one he clicked on. Nextcloud however, shows some crypting package name instead of “nextcloud”.

1 Like
29

Yes, I understand all that, but I can’t answer the technical details of why certain things are the way they are in the Nextcloud client. Check out the issue tracker on GitHub, the reboot thing has been and probably still is discussed extensively there. And if there isn’t an open issue for a the cryptic name, which I suspect is just the name of the msi package the updater downloads, open a new one.

30

I too shut my PC down every night but many don’t. But that’s not the point, Nextcloud nags on start-up and often. Most other cloud sync clients don’t need reboots when they update - OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox.

31

Indeed
 whilst having it close Explorer is scary, I used to do it and the update still insisted on restarting - every time.

32

This is an important point - many companies are moving away from allowing end users admin rights for understandable fears about ransomware. Any application that requires admin rights is going to get frowned upon.

33

Considering the period of instability recently, I’d council taking a step back and looking at the Nextcloud client architecture - seriously. I’ve just lost a Nextcloud client because of instability. This recent right-click issues comes at the end of long list :frowning:

  1. Client freezes and prevents all file access on computer (the showstopper that lost the client).
  2. The timestamp issue whereby Nextcloud doesn’t maintain the milliseconds value and therefore Excel thinks somebody else has changed the file.
  3. Client crashes when copying lots of new files using a tool like robocopy.
  4. Create a new folder and you end up with the client removing it or it ends up as “New folder”. Rename a new folder quickly after creating it and you often end up with old and new names.
  5. Nextcloud stops synchronising so cloud copy is out of sync.
  6. Performance is measurably slower than OneDrive which is one of the slowest.
  7. Often gets stuck “Preparing sync” and trying to open a non-local file ends up with “Cloud provider failed”.
  8. Frequent updates requiring annoying restarts.
  9. Update always adds the icon to the desktop.
  10. No way to get back to top of activities window after lots of activity so you can’t see the most recent activity.

I feel a real cad about posting those but this level of instability means the client looses faith and goes elsewhere. This client has been more than happy with Nextcloud for over two years - it’s the recent lack of quality control that’s sent them over the edge.

I created this post in December 2022 and we’re still talking about it.

34

Well, at least you prioritised the issues reasonably by putting the reboot issue at number 8 and the desktop icon at number 9 on your list :wink:

Seriously, I don’t think there’s any point in discussing this any further here because nobody denies that these issues exist, and that many of them can at least make working with Nextcloud more difficult compared to other solutions. Also, many users would certainly be happy if the more cosmetic issues 8 and 9 could be resolved in the near future.

However, we can’t solve these issues in the forums, so I don’t see the point in complaining about them here over and over again.

35

I have marked this as solution because this is how far we can get on the forum. We are users, not the developers. So if you want to discuss the technical details, help implement new and better solutions, please go to the repository and check with the developers directly.

If you want to stick to Nextcloud but don’t want to use the client, there are other clients which hookup directly via webdav, perhaps for some that might be a better experience.

1 Like