this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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Alternatives to Google Docs/sheets? (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by shadowSprite@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

What are people using in place of Google docs/sheets/etc? I'm looking for a simple program that syncs with the cloud so I can access my documents on my different computers or my Android phone. I run Windows 10 (don't crucify me). I use libre office for things that can stay on one computer, but for things like school notes, budgeting spreadsheets, or certain reference sheets I've created for work I need to be able to access on my different devices or log in on a web browser and easily have the changes sync. I'm constantly on the go and logging into different devices between work and school and while I want to de-google I've just found the convenience of the google suite has kept me saving non-confidential stuff with them. With some minor searching I found Cryptpad, has anyone used that, or can anyone recommend anything else?

I don't do anything crazy, for docs its mostly just typing and basic formatting, importing pictures into my school notes, very simple tables, etc. With Sheets I just use basic math functions to balance my bank accounts and keep my budget on track, so I don't need anything advanced, it just needs to work and sync with the cloud. I don't even care if I have to pay a few bucks for it if it's worthwhile.

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[–] youRFate@feddit.de 16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

A really cool do-it-all Option to de-google / de-cloud yourself is to buy a synology NAS. They come with all the cloud stuff you want, it works really well out of the box:

  • Synology Drive for synced files, sharing files / folders with friends etc.
  • Synology Office (Integrated into Drive)
  • Synology Photos does the photo backup from your mobile devices
  • Synology Calendar for calendar syncing etc

That way you're not moving from one cloud provider to another one you might or might not trust, but you host it all yourself.

[–] quixotic120@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Or if you have an old machine and a enough money to by a few hard drives (which you should if you can afford a synology) throw the drives in the old machine and slap something on there. Truenas, Proxmox, unraid, etc. unraids probably the easiest but it costs money. All of them have some kind of docker/kubernetes so you can just run whatever open source version of the thing you want. Nextcloud, libreoffice, etc. you could just install some version of linux too, doesn’t need to be one of those, but those are much simpler to deploy and (most of them) are tailor made for the task

Synology can do all of this too but isn’t as expandable. Want more power to run a jellyfin server and transcode 8 4k streams at once? Plop in a gpu or better yet upgrade to an intel with quicksync for low power usage. Want 8 more hard drives? Change the case and add an hba. Want 24 more? Add another hba and a disk shelf, as long as your motherboard has enough pci lanes. It doesn’t? Upgrade it. The trade off is usability, the synology stuff is easier to use. It’s also more expensive initially, you can make a basic nas with a $50 e waste pc that an office was throwing away (though tbf you’ll probably spend a bit adding disks to it just like you would with a synology)

Depends on how much of a dork you are I guess

[–] youRFate@feddit.de 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Very true, but I like my NAS to be maintenance-free, and Synology delivers on that. Their apps work out of the box and are installed with basically one click. I fiddle with tech enough at my job, I like my private tech to just work.

Even as a power-user you can do a lot, the synology nas also runs docker, so you can run whatever you'd like on it, not just the synology provided services.

Expanding the hardware is kind of a pain, even with RAM they are kind of weird and you need some approved (synology-brand) ram, or need to fiddle with some system files to make it accept any ram.

Also i’d love if they went with zfs instead of their llvm + btrfs.

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yeah, Synology is fine but they're usually overpriced and underpowered, and have limited software available. Running a normal homemade server makes much more sense, in my opinion.

[–] CCMan1701A@startrek.website 4 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Last time I checked the Synology office apps on Android didn't work too well. Has that changed recently?

[–] shrugal@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago

Idk when you checked, but they work pretty well now. Not quite on par with Google Docs, but the closest thing I know.

[–] youRFate@feddit.de 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I don’t have an android. On iOS I tried their table thing, it works decently, but not nearly as nicely optimised for the use on an iPad as Apple Numbers is.

[–] coolusername@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago

They work fine for me.

[–] shrugal@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago

I can't recommend Synology enough! They make it as easy and painless as possible to own your data again.

[–] anamethatisnt@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago

The simple solution is to use another cloud, such as proton drive mentioned below.

Another more technical solution is to setup a vpn at home and use vpn + smb to share files with your phones, this one fails if your computer isn't always online at home or if your internet provider runs CGNAT.

Your computer could be replaced with a selfhosted solution as nextcloud running on separate hardware, but now we're firmly in selfhosting land.

The VPN home could be replaced with a VPS that both your home network and mobile devices connect to as a CGNAT workaround.

The KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) principle says that getting another cloud storage is the way to go. If you truly wanna own your cloud then a trip to selfhost land it is.

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 months ago

Collabora office on nextcloud works great for me Theres also cryptpad.fr

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

If you use Nextcloud, there's either Nextcloud Office (which is actually Collabora Office) or OnlyOffice. As you already mentioned, Cryptpad is another alternative.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

LibreOffice + git

[–] Errand7030@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Write about what the LibreOffice + git combination is and how you use it.

[–] Tayphix@lemm.ee 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

this comment reads like a request to some LLM (or a test question) rather than actual human interaction 🤔

[–] C126@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago

Welcome to the future of communications

[–] BurningTurtle@lemmy.burningturtle.win 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Nextcloud

[–] Facebones@reddthat.com 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Man I could never actually get it working well (and reliably) enough to use on my rpi.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What method did you use to deploy it? Did you try this one https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one

[–] Facebones@reddthat.com 2 points 5 months ago

I've tried it both ways, the all in one seemed to do alright but I didn't realize I needed the "login" info from that initial stage later so I 100% boned myself there lol. It never worked right again, I'm sure due to some lingering files I couldn't find.

I'm fiddling with all my drives to dual boot anyways, maybe I'll give it another go.

[–] mecfs@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Can you just have an obsidian vault that syncs on your cloud drive, whatever cloud service you use?

[–] FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

+1 for proton drive

I have the premium plan for and vpn and password manager benifits and use it for college work, game back ups, and saving and sharing unhinged video game clips with friends

I use libre office myself as well with proton drive so I can pull up all my .doc and .docx files on my iPhone (ik very privacy focused /s)

Also the other user mentioned obsidian I like it too. I use more like OneNote kind of notes for my college classes be it typed or hand written (with the Excalidraw plugin)

I set my obsidian save location to proton drive so I can hand write my notes in class then pull them up on my big monitor on my home computer

Sometimes obsidian will cause proton drive to freakout due to obsidians auto save feature (nothing bad it’ll just stop syncing) so I just pause proton, do my thing in obsidian with it saving but not syncing, then just resume the sync

Sometimes they’ll play nice together but other times not so idk¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: formatting

[–] aev@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 5 months ago

I like CryptPad by Framasoft, for big stuff.

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

There's no shortage of alternatives for this but the best one for your particular usecase is probably syncthing. It will sync files on a folder across devices.

[–] amanneedsamaid@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

Standard Notes

[–] johsny@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

I use syncthing to sync ios and linux. Nothing goes into any cloud.

[–] INeedMana@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

access my documents on my different computers or my Android phone

I had similar setup but I was using obsidian and pcloud. Syncing up&down was done by scripts using rclone/roundsync (android). Script part might be harder to achieve using windows

But I came here to say that I finally decided to test syncthing and it's so much easier! And just works. Now pcloud is rather a backup and sharing than gateway