[benologist]

I'd go one step further and build your own private cloud for a bunch of stuff. I did all this easily through a slick web interface for open source software and linux that Synology has created.

A lot of this stuff includes apps for phone/tv/etc that you can download for free in stores or even from their own site, and it can be available to everyone in your household for some pretty decent savings - if it still works in a year I'll have saved more than I spent on it ($290 + disks x4).

- cloud files almost directly equivalent to Dropbox, I haven't solved sharing files yet but I have versioning and undeleting for my work

- note server like OneNote with a browser extension to save pages, screenshots etc

- music streaming ala Amazon Music et al

- torrent downloading I guess is like seed boxes but never had one

- video streaming server like Netflix

- photo uploading like iCloud

- email server, didn't actually install this one yet but everything else is up and running

- dns server with network-wide ad/malware/tracker blocking

[Yetanfou]

That is exactly what something like Owncloud/Nextcloud (for which I made those book/publication-related tools) enables you to do: create a 'private cloud' (what a silly word it is, really... cloud). It does some of the things you mention 'out of the box' (file storage, photo uploading) or after installing some 'apps' (note server, music streaming, video streaming, email user agent (not a mail server)). Since it runs on *nix you get the rest (mail server, dns server) more or less 'for free', just configure it the way you want.

[benologist]

Same in principal, but Synology have built a lovely, multi-window web interface for a lot of linux and each of those apps, along with their own Android + iOS apps.

https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/live_demo

That consolidates a lot of different UIs, signins, permissions etc into a single coherent interface - even terminal commands like configuring firewall, network interfaces, user permissions, all that stuff.

To give you some examples it takes two clicks, a domain and any contrived email address to get a Let's Encrypt certificate. It takes three more clicks to assign it to a web app Synology is serving from that device. You can add SSL to your own reverse-proxied app, also effortless to add, just as easily and enable HSTS with a checkbox.

Their torrent software can watch RSS feeds and download straight into a folder where it's indexed for their video server. Their video client provides a nice interface for browsing but delegates the actual playback to VLC.

[eropple]

> cloud files almost directly equivalent to Dropbox

And when your electronics get trashed by water damage or the stray lightning strike? Cloud computing involves redundancy and fault tolerance and a box in your closet is neither. That goes particularly for "almost directly equivalent to Dropbox"; even setting aside sharing, "not having everything go up in smoke because my house burns down" is kind of a killer-app feature.

You can, of course, build a "private cloud". (I've done it for clients before!) But it will cost you.

[benologist]

It can also automatically sync whatever you want to any of dozens of archiving services... encrypted or not. Including Amazon Cloud Drive boasting unlimited space for $60/year, BackBlaze B2, S3, Glacier, Dropbox, Google Drive etc.

It can keep a redundant NAS in sync too but not sure how seamless that would be in practice if you wanted redundancy for the software running on it.

However what really makes me optimistic about this stuff is the aligned interests:

- a great software experience for their hardware leveraging open source solutions (I think it's brtfs for the versioning/restoring, transmission for torrents etc)

vs

- Dropbox selling a blob of space for $10/month and trying to solve the "problem" of you not paying more by lying in their advertisements