A month with ownCloud, and I’m out

I really wanted to like ownCloud, the “Dropbox you host yourself” (my description, not theirs). It seemed so promising – I could have as much space as I wanted, it would be more private, etc etc etc. But I’ve had it installed for over a month now, and seen numerous upgrades to both the client and the server, and I’m ready to uninstall.

  • The 64 bit Linux client crashes and dies constantly. I’m actually somewhat surprised on the rare mornings when I wake up and discover it hasn’t crashed overnight. Yes, it crashes when nobody is modifying any of the files on any of the systems that share those files, sometimes multiple times a day when I can be bothered to restart it.
  • All the clients continually put up an error indicator at random times and then clear up at other random times. Again, usually when nothing is happening.
  • While it offers CalDav sync and I was able to add the calendar to my phone, iPad, and laptop calendars, I wasn’t able to use it to break free of the Google Calendar hegemony because I share calendars with other people and I couldn’t very well ask them to convert as well. They had a web based calendar of their own, but it is incredibly basic compared to say, Google Calendar or iCloud calendar.
  • Similar problem with the contact syncing.

Frankly I would have put up with all the other problems if the 64 bit Linux client wasn’t such a flakey piece of shit. But I see no reason to keep going with this if I’m getting no synchronization between my main desktop and my other computers.