Do you have recommendations for a self hosted webDAV server that could act as a Dropbox / GDrive replacement? I‘m using Nextcloud only for that use case because I haven’t found anything that seemed as stable.
I am not much into self hosting other than a barebone setup that takes care of my linux ISOs on a VPS, but you might want to check Syncthing. Put it on a server and then connect it from other places. This software is a marvel at simplicity (except a bit of settings/config - I mean for heaven's sake that can definitely be improved :P; but once done it's rock solid - it just works and not like Apple where we pretend it just works, it really just works) and robustness. Also I never face speed problem or any hiccups pretty much. It puts Dropbox and GDrive etc to shame combined.
If I could find time to be better at self hosting and will be able to take care of a server's upkeep, security/OS/package patches/updates et cetera then if I have to setup two first tools on this it would be Syncthing and RClone.
On the other hand for my current needs I use filen.io (it's on BF sale right now). It's not the best but works fine for my use - like a remote hard disk acting like backup (its "local backup" sync mode).
There's solid SFTP clients for every OS (even Android!) and all it requires on the server is the already installed OpenSSH, so I never really saw the need to look into webDAV.
For user-facing oses yes, but webdav is available on lot "embedded" devices like Smart Whiteboard, and for many oses is built in (even Windows 98), so it's easier to deploy
all sorts of network security appliances in foreign networks make reliance on ssh a futile endeavor. webdav works over standard ports with standard tooling (web browser)
We used Seafile in $old_job a couple of years back. Still had some rough edges back then (mostly with user management) but the rest was rock solid. Loved working with it, managing and sharing files was pretty easy.
I echo GPs thoughts. I use a VPS with syncthing. While that is also clunky, it works for my usecase while keeping multiple redundant copies across devices.
Depends on what you mean by redundant though, right? Syncthing is generally not gonna protect you from an accidental `rm -r *`, unless perhaps you set yourself up with a permanent head server where everything is versioned but on which files are never edited. (I'll be happy to be wrong)
- the core feature, file sync, has extremely unreliable clients that can't resolve even the simplest of conflicts reliably while sucking up 8 CPU cores to do... nothing, really
- all the ~ecosystem~ of plugins they decided to staple onto it because file sync doesn't make them money, are all low quality compared to dedicated solutions, and synergy between them isn't great enough to make up for all the problems
- the plugin API is utter garbage and deliberately underdocumented, to force you to hire the devs as consultants to undo their own mess (which probably is a major driver for #2, you spend too much time fighting the APIs to get useful work done)
- "core" plugins get randomly deprecated with no useful replacement
So whatever you use nextcloud for, something else does it better
