this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024

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Review of Ente Photos, A Private Google And iCloud Photos Alternative (jwestall.com)

submitted 4 months ago by jlwtformer to c/technology

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[–] Bell 22 points 4 months ago

Thank you for finding and reviewing any sort of Google Photos alternative. I'd like to de-Google and this is one of the pieces.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (3 children)

You can selfhost it. Good. I thought immich was the only option, but maybe I’ll consider this, too.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

There's also PhotoPrism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

PhotoPrism® is an AI-Powered Photos App

Isn’t it the kind of software that most people here don’t like?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

Immich also has (local) AI for face recognition.

Most people here don't like it when other people are training on your photos.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

No, it's powered by Tensorflow, not an LLM. It's the useful side of AI, basically, also it's locally hosted. In case you don't like it, you can disable it. It's still a great app.

[–] EncryptKeeper 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

People here don’t dislike concept of AI, they dislike AI companies stealing data and shoving AI where it doesn’t belong. There’s nothing wrong with locally hosted basic facial recognition.

[–] piyuv 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I use it but not having a native app is a downer

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I've been using Gallery for PhotoPrism for a while now and it's pretty solid.

[–] piyuv 1 points 4 months ago

iOS pleb here…

[+] [email protected] -7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Immich requires Docker?? 🙄

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Is that bad?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

It isn't.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

For me

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Why?

[+] [email protected] -8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Docker is probably nice to use, but it's UI is just so goddamn auful for something that other people think everyone is instantly able to pick up. The massive disconnect between containers, images, instances, or whatever near-synonym that the UI expects you to know, and what they actually do is astounding.

I still have ZERO goddamn idea which port is internal or external in the -p 80:80 option because every single fucking guide just has it there and expects you to just magically know which one is what and EVERY LAST ONE just uses the same internal and external port. And good fucking luck looking it up and getting even vaguely relevant results (I've tried)

So when something says "oh just use docker-compose ..." I groan because I have not one fucking idea what actually happens. Does that create a container? Or an image? Or instance? Which one of those is the template and which one of those is the running code which is identified by a completely meaningless hexadecimal string?

Also how do I back them up? Do I also have to back up EVERYTHING in the container? What if I just want to back up the database? How would I pass through a folder on an external drive? Or do I have to duplicate the hundreds of gigabytes of photos I have for just this container? Are those included in backups if backups are even a thing? What if I can't store all that on my boot drive? Am I able to move JUST that single container or image or whatever the fuck?

There's a reason I like running things on bare metal. It's plenty secure if it's just for you and also behind additional authentication and put it in its own user like I do. It just fucking works.

[–] fluxc0 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

okay hear me out: what if you took the time to learn it and learn how it works. literally all of your gripes are solvable one way or another. your ignorance fuels your hatred.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Okay. Any good guide?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This helped me greatly in understanding all the different things about Docker/Docker Compose: https://gabrieltanner.org/blog/docker-compose/

I also struggled with the external/internal port thing etc

[–] fluxc0 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

tywele has a great answer, also; sorry for such an abrasive response, wasn’t in a great mood 😅

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Its fine.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You can selfhost it.

docker compose

Pass.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Why do you avoid docker? It’s cleaner than installing on your machine directly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Cleaner how? Systemd services can already provide basically all of the isolation features you could want if that's what you're talking about. It's got namespaces, chroot+bind mounts, per-service dynamically allocated users, syscall filter, capability filter, and so on.

Docker adds a lot of for most uses unnecessary complexity (a huge part of which being the networking). This also sometimes causes problems, for example it messes with netfilter tables which works fine most of the time but can actually do unwanted things like IIRC open ports you didn't expect to be open because you didn't open them in your firewall. There's also how if you use prebuilt images (which you probably do) you're at the mercy of everyone whose containers you're using to provide security updates in time.

Of course there's cases where you actually want something like docker (multi-machine orchestration, spinning up multiple of the same container dynamically depending on load, running people's arbitrary build environments like in GitHub Actions are a few examples) but a lot of times when people are pushing it it really seems like cargo cult mentality.

[–] TheGrandNagus 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Pretty short and lacking of details to be considered a proper review, IMO. It doesn't show any UX, go over all the functionality, etc. Good to see that it's fully open sourced and E2EE though.

I've been thinking recently about a proton drive subscription. I'm still leaving towards that, but I'll look into this too

[–] jlwtformer 6 points 4 months ago

I can understand why you feel that. I'll go back and add more to it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Just a warning: the photo part of proton drive is incredibly basic to be generous and even that doesn't seem to work smoothly (on android). Just to handpick 2 very annoying things aside from lack of features: opening a picture that's locally on your phone takes 1-2 seconds, and when you back out it has to refresh the gallery view every time, which also takes 1-2 seconds - incredibly annoying while looking for the correct picture.

I use it as a second type of backup for my photos, but I definitely couldn't live with the UX the app provides. IMO the drive part in general is very lacking.

I'm still happy with my proton subscription for mail and VPN, but I'd suggest you trial the drive part before committing to it (unless you already know it's ok for your needs, in which case great!).

[–] doodledup 1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Is this a review or advertising?

[–] jlwtformer 13 points 4 months ago

I'm not paid at all. This was just my thoughts about the service. I'm going to add more to it since it being short seems to be a common comment.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

The review was short but interesting.

I feel like we (people on Lemmy) have to be more open to people taking the time to review something, even if it ain’t as good as what you could get from some professionals.

I ‘m gonna have a look at this to see if it could work with the 2tb of storage I have on my kDrive (by infomaniak) account.