What's wrong with Nextcloud, and why is it slow/clunky?

It needs some tweaks to be snappy. The defaults are really bad.

change database from SQLite to a proper database like MySQL or Postgres, and configure the database server to use your memory fully
increase the PHP memory limit from the default (128M on many distros) to >1G, the more the better
install APCu in-memory cache for PHP
add Redis as additional cache
turn off the antivirus extension, if installed (ClamAV is useless)
use http/2 on Apache/nginx to increase performance with multiple connections

https://docbot.onetwoseven.one/services/nextcloud/

Thank you for these suggestions. But I have a few questions.

How can I do the 2nd and 3rd point if I am using docker/podman containers?

Why is ClamAV useless?
- Not sure how to do that in docker, I’ve run mine as a plain old PHP-FPM site for years and years. It might be something that can be tweaked using config files or environment variables, or might require building a custom image.
  
  ClamAV is slow and doesn’t catch the nastiest of malware. Its entire approach is stuck in 2008. It’s better than nothing for screening emails, but for a private file store it won’t help much considering that you’ll already have the files on your system somewhere. And most importantly, it slows down file uploads 10x and increases CPU load substantially. The only good reason to use ClamAV for nextcloud is if you will be sued if you don’t!
- ClamAV is good for detecting simple threats. However, I hear it eats ram.
- For the 2nd point, see https://docs.docker.com/config/containers/resource_constraints/#limit-a-containers-access-to-memory
- This has me curious, not to derail the topic, but I always hear that ClamAV is the best way to go for Linux. Is there a free solution that you would recommend in place of it?
- It's in the config file. https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_server/config_sample_php_parameters.html
Out of curiosity, why isn't this stuff done by default?
MySQL is still pretty slow
- it should work with mariaDB which is faster in my experience
You can do all of that and NC will still be the piece of shirt that is it is fail to sync stuff.
- You are like the most miserable poster with so many axes to grind.
  
  Relax man.
- I've never had such an experience in 2 years

Likely because it's mainly written in PHP and the default database is SQLite, which is not great for large deployments.

But I use Nextcloud daily on a low end machine and I don't think it's that bad.

SQLite sure but I doubt PHP has any negative impact.
- PHP for sure can have a negative effect depending on how they are handling their data access through.
  
  The application code itself running on PHP probably isn't a problem but the influence that PHP may have over your data access patterns can be a source of significant performance problems.
Likely because it’s mainly written in PHP and the default database is SQLite

Maybe the issue isn't the technologies but rather the complete and utter ineptitude of NC's developers and bullshit decisions their business team makes. Every tool is a great tool if you know how to use it properly.
- Idk man, runs great on my Proxmox machine

I assume it's just not built to be fast, because it's still slow even with MySQL, Redis, high PHP memory limits, a fast CPU and NVMe storage, and so on.

Last time I tested it I had a load time of 1-2 seconds just to bring up the files interface, it feels laggy no matter what. And syncing a folder with ~50k files and 40GB or so in size takes a very long time compared to Syncthing or just syncing over SMB.

Maybe use Postges? I'm using it with MariaDB and Redis and its pretty fast.

Use redis and it will feel smoother.

Yep. When I first set up my instance, I couldn't believe how slow it was. I set up redis using the Nextcloud documentation and its like butter now.

Nextcloud is slow and clunky if you run it on a banana.

Run it on a "normal" server and everything is smooth.

Yeah, and don't pretend that comparable software like Google Drive, Sharepoint or Dropbox is faster.
- I compare it to a samba or (s)ftp share. I wish it was similar in speed and ease of use.
  
  It's become better since I migrated over to PostgreSQL. But it's still not great.
- Dropbox is faster.
  
  Dropbox is A LOT faster than NC ever was. But if you want to talk about speeds and reliability then use Synching. Add FileBrowser if you want to have a WebUI on a central “server” to access all your files and you’ll be 100x better than the garbage that NC offers.
I tried running nextcloud on an allwinner RiscV chip and it was dead slow lol
- In fairness anything is slow on lower end hardware. The tradeoff is that it is very power efficient
Run it on a “normal” server and everything is smooth.

Sure until you try with a high end 12 core CPU on NVMe storage all kinds of caching, redis etc. and you find you it doesn't perform particularly better.
- I'm no hardware person but I don't have redis or caching enabled and it works fine
- It runs fine in a VM with a few cores, 4gb of ram and Sata SSDs
  
  The entire Nextcloud folder is on a network share as well.
Im running it on celeron g3930 and its great. I did remove most extensions (this was the trick I believe) and using MySQL. I have only 2 users tho

I keep trying it every couple of years to see if it works better, but nah. Even with MySQL/PG + Redis, it's still slow and clunky. Maybe in 2026

If you want fast file sync between computers, use syncthing

* fast and reliable. Add FileBrowser if you want to have a WebUI on a central "server" to access all your files and you'll be 100x better than the garbage that NC offers.

Its not slow and clunky for me

Because SQLite is slow as balls. Use MariaDB and redis:

https://markontech.com/posts/setup-nextcloud-with-redis-using-docker/

PostgreSQL makes it faster still.
- Is there a migration guide?

What I dont get is why so many years later, their android app still won't auto sync

You need to configure it
- Nothing to configure..you specify folders, but they won't auto upload or download
Because that is not its intended function. If you want that just use Easy Sync with Nextcloud or another WebDAV server.
- Your both crazy. My shit syncs just fine.

I have been running nextcloud for some time, it was running very quickly. But the v28 update seems to have broke some of the extra apps, like groupfolders.

That said, it's very much a system that needs good hardware to run it well

Yeah, it's been broken since v27. I'm still on v26 because of this.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
Git	Popular version control system, primarily for code
HTTP	Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
NVMe	Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
SSD	Solid State Drive mass storage
SSO	Single Sign-On
VPN	Virtual Private Network
nginx	Popular HTTP server

6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.

[Thread #580 for this sub, first seen 7th Mar 2024, 12:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

It has been slowly improving. It used to be a lot worse but I have a lot less issues with it now than I did before all the changes. Its not the fastest best way to do anything, there are better calendar, file sync, email etc etc applications out there in every category that run better but its also quite an easy way to make a lot of things happen.

Nextcloud is fine. Use the All-in-One master container, it's faster than any other way I've installed it. I've tried every method from bare metal to docker to NextcloudPi and it's the fastest and easiest to maintain.

I run the official docker with mariadb and it was never an issue for me

https://downloadmoreram.com/

And maybe CPU, and also need some good old fine tuning

What's wrong with Nextcloud, and why is it slow/clunky?

Yes it's a pile of shit. Nextcloud is garbage, very bad usability, more reasons and issues listed here: https://lemmy.world/comment/1571886 and https://lemmy.world/comment/346174

Is there a technical reason why it’s slow and clunky? Any problematic choices with how it was built?

Yes, like every single technical decision and line of code they've ever made. https://lemmy.world/comment/5490189

There's software that while good intended is simply garbage and NextCloud is a good example. They constantly market themselves as the self-hosted alternative to MS Office 365 / Google yet they never deliver.

Just because it didn't work for you doesn't make it "shit". I've been running Nextcloud for a file and it works pretty good.
- I've posted screenshots and a lot of detailed information of it failing. It's just not a question of personal preference, it's most like it has old bugs that aren't ever fixed and things keep piling.
A previous thread put it best. It always feels 75% complete.

I've been using it since back when it was owncloud. It never felt stable.

Finally went with seafile and it's super fast, stable and reliable.
- Seafile, that's a name I haven't heard in a very long time. How does that work in terms of self-hosting limitations, mobile clients and sync? Do you have any experience with Synching for instance? How does it compare performance wise?
Every of your links is about the webmail app not nextcloud as a whole
- There's a lot more complains, besides the Mail "app" is a big advertised features of it and is developed by the core team.