Get the Latest ownCloud, Plus Guides for Getting the Most from It
The ownCloud development team announced the latest versions of its cloud platform in late December. You can find the downloads at http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Communications/ownCloud-58067.shtml. They are available for all supported operating systems, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.
ownCloud has been getting a lot of attention for its flexibility, and because interest in private clouds is on the rise. You can move beyond what services such as Dropbox and Box offer by leveraging ownCloud, and you don't have to have your files sitting on servers that you don't choose, governed by people you don't know. Here are our latest updated resources for getting going with ownCloud, literally in minutes.
LibreOffice news. Document viewing and editing capabilities for ownCloud are now easy to integrate, as Collabora Online Development Edition -- or CODE -- is a virtual machine that brings LibreOffice Online and ownCloud server together. The edition is an online version of the open source LibreOffice suite with OwnCloud, integrating viewing and editing capabilities with ownCloud. Find out more here.
The FLOSS Manuals ownCloud Guide. As we've reported, FLOSS Manuals' guide to ownCloud is completely free, and a good starting point if you want to deploy it. Before diving into it, you may want to gain some familiarity with what ownCloud is, which we covered here. The FLOSS Manuals guide is aimed to be a complement to the existing documentation at http://doc.owncloud.org. It has sections on how to share files, calendars, contacts and more in the cloud, and optimize security. There is a whole section on SysAdmin tools, which makes experimenting with ownCloud easy.
Leverage the Pi. In this post, you can get easy instructions for running ownCloud with a Raspberry Pi device. Very cool.
ownCloud on Linux. There are many good tutorials available for running ownCloud on Linux. Linux User & Developer has a good one here, and Ubuntu users can find an easy tutorial here.
Video Tutorials. For some people, a picture is worth a thousand words, and the good news is that there are lots of video tutorials that help you set ownCloud up in minutes. You can find lots of them on YouTube, including specialized ones that can get you going with applications in the cloud.
Twitter Resources. You can keep up with social postings surrounding ownCloud on Twitter, either through the official channel https://twitter.com/ownCloud or the community channel: https://twitter.com/ownClouders.
Forums. Finally, ownCloud has lots of useful forums that you can dive into for more resources. There are many specialized tutorials on the forums. Starting here is a good first step.
Go Mobile. Don't forget that there are mobile clients for ownCloud, which can help you get much more out of the platform. With these clients, you can remotely access an ownCloud server, browse your files, download assets and more.
The nice thing about having your ownCloud deployment in place is that you can access files and applications from anywhere. You also control the security of your setup, and you don't have to worry about security breaches. Hopefully, you'll find some good resources for getting started here.