It seems that while this update once again contains lots of (unncessary) AI bullshit, it also has some other positive changes, such as :
- More End-To-End encrypted functionality
- Improved file upload (apparently 6x as fast)
- Better performance
- Converting documents
- Native desktop client UI (hopefully the new appImage does work for Linux, because it does not work right now.
- Improved AppAPI for other developers to develop plugins / apps / extensions in different programming languages
- Added pronouns to account profile
- Right-To-Left text for the Arabic users (and whoever uses RTL instead of LTR)
- PGP/MIME support for Nextcloud Mail
- Chunked file upload on desktop app
- Improved OpenID Connect API
Overall, I am still disappointed by the direction towards AI that Nextcloud has taken, but I suspect that it makes them more money. Also, apparently large organizations / enterprises who pay Nextcloud GmbH for support, are also allowed to influence the roadmap of the software, which probably has something to do with jumping on the AI bandwagon.
However, despite this new direction, Nextcloud still does the job for me: Easy file syncing, with document collaboration, calendar, contacts and basically act as a whole replacement for Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace / whatever with little to no problems.
The AI support doesn’t hurt you if you don’t use it - and they’ve done the right thing by making sure you can do things locally instead of cloud.
Here’s what AI does for me (self-hosted, my own scripts) on NC 9:
When our phones sync photos to Nextcloud a local LLM creates image descriptions on all the photos, as well as creating five tags for each.
It is absolutely awesome.
Which LLM do you use? Ollama?
I didn’t even think of trying to use a LLM for this. I have been kind of underwhelmed with dedicated plugins for this. Maybe Ollama will finally satisfy all my needs.
But it cannot recognise people, right? But tags and descriptions would be better than nothing.
Ollama as a general LLM server and then LLaVa as model
