ownCloud 4 Released With File Encryption And Versioning, More

I've always wanted to try out owncloud. Maybe now's the time to do it. Anyone have any suggestions?

I find it a bit unreliable, and there appears to be a problem with file sizes.

I tried an earlier version and found it lacking. For example, file encryption (a must-have for cloud service) was not supported in the earlier versions. But, I think this group has some good ideas and they seem to be pouring a lot of effort into filling the gaps as quickly as possible, so I think it's a project worth watching.

For now, I'm continuing to use my own cloud service which is based on encfs for encryption, ssh/rsync for access, and a few support scripts. It's custom tailored just for my needs and works perfectly, for me anyway.

The development pace is quite rapid, and OwnCloud is getting a lot of polish. The encryption on the server is a big deal for me but in version 3 I could always connect with ssl to encrypt my session.

ODF file viewing is a big feature in version 4. When they get ODF editing, it will be huge. Via WebDAV you can use any app to edit a file. And the music player and gallery apps are nice bonuses.

I've had a version 3 OwnCloud running, and it is easy to install if your server or shared host runs PHP 5.3 with the php-zip extension.

The software does a lot, and it is getting better. It's certainly usable now -- and there's nothing out there like it in free software.

@Steven,

Have you encountered the issues @TracyAnne mentioned above? They seem serious.

I think there are limits in PHP on file-upload sizes. I believe the limit on my system is 64 MB per file. I do think the size is configurable within PHP, but I don't think this is the solution for video files or ISOs.

While OwnCloud is extremely capable, it's moving so rapidly that I wouldn't call it "mature" software. I would say that it's about to leave hobbyist territory.

While there are bugs here and there, I wouldn't say the system is unreliable. On the contrary, it's a lot more solid than I thought it would be.

While the web interface is very well done, I tend to use my OwnCloud via WebDAV more often than not. I can open any file with any local application. It pretty much works like Dropbox, except over WebDAV. And if the syncing clients (under heavy development at present) work out, it'll be even more like Dropbox, if that's your thing (and it's kind of mine).

The problems I found are that it has trouble handling very large files Video and ISOs, particularly, even when one changes the PHP file size and time out settings. (NOTE this is running between several machines over a local network and to the ownCloud file system on the same machine)

In addition in terms of reliability I find that it loses files, not simply later locating them in Lost and Found (and that happens to me a lot, which is exceedingly annoying), but losing them altogether, so it's just as well I only copy files into the own cloud storage area.

Right now the sync clients are very alpha, but the server-side software seems acceptably solid.