this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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Nextcloud asked in a poll at https://mastodon.social/@nextcloud@mastodon.xyz/115095096413238457 what database its users are running. Interestingly one fifth replied they don't know. Should people know better where their data is stored, or is it a good thing everything is running so smoothly people don't need to know what their software stack is built upon?

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[–] SparroHawc@lemmy.zip 186 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (10 children)

If you're running it in a prebuilt container, as long as it works it shouldn't matter and you don't need to care.

Of course, when your database gets corrupted after Nextcloud updates because you had an app running that isn't supported in the new version, it will suddenly matter a lot.

[–] Pechente@feddit.org 57 points 2 months ago

I‘m using a hosted Nextcloud instance from Hetzner and I have no idea what this is running on either. There’s a significant number of people who didn’t set up their Nextcloud instance, so people not knowing what it’s running on isn’t too surprising.

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[–] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 118 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I write software for a living, and have worked with all 3 database options in the past. I don't know what DB backend my nextcloud server is using, nor do I care.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 54 points 2 months ago (14 children)

Yeah, that is the kind of concern for the service developer or a very opinionated sys admin. For self-hosting, few people will reach the workload where such a decision has any material or measurable impact.

[–] stardreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Exactly. Unless you are actively doing maintenance, there is no need to remember what DB you are using. It took me 3 minutes just to remember my nextcloud setup since it's fully automated.

It's the whole point of using tiered services. You look at stuff at the layer you are on. Do you also worry about your wifi link-level retransmissions when you are running curl?

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[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 64 points 2 months ago

"18% of car owners don't know their brake fluid DOT rating."

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 62 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That is actually good news. Means that people more likely to be "normies" are adopting an alternative solution.

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[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 47 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

Every person using a computer should know what their filesystem is and what database they are using. Otherwise they are fools.

Can you believe kids don’t know what NTFS or APFS are these days?! Stupid iPad babies.

[–] paper_moon@lemmy.world 42 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Haha at some point it did matter to regular folks though. I remember in Junior high when I would try to pirate games or software on Windows, I learned the big difference between fat32 and the new filesystem Microsoft released, NTFS because I couldn't download files larger than 4GB on fat32.

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 24 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It’s important if you’re using flash drives across platforms though that’s pretty rare these days too. My wife has run into this problem by formatting as ExFAT (GUID partition table) when print shops’ terrible machines only support FAT32 and/or MBR partition tables.

Thankfully macOS at home understands ExFAT otherwise those formatted drives from her Windows work computer wouldn’t even work.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

At that point, were you regular folks though?

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[–] chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Wait is APFS a new file system than NTFS? Guess I'm too busy on my Tiktoks and Nintendos to keep up to date

[–] Mordikan@kbin.earth 13 points 2 months ago

Damn kids with your twitternets and me mes.

[–] grte@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 months ago (4 children)
[–] chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 months ago

Ah that would explain why I didn't know. I have next to no experience with Apple devices.

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[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 2 months ago

Holy Poe's Law...

[–] ominouslemon@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 months ago

Kids don't event know the folder struture of their Home directory, so why would they know what a File System is? Lol

[–] DaveX64@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 months ago

Sir, this is a Wendy's :)

[–] tfm@piefed.europe.pub 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 months ago

That kid is never going to figure out if they downloaded the assignment pdf to “Downloads (iPad)” or “Downloads (iCloud)”

[–] sixty@sh.itjust.works 45 points 2 months ago

Whatever the docker compose file that I found had

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 43 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I also have no idea if my place has PVC or galvanized steel plumbing; or its designed electrical load. Why should users care about the DBMS.

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[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 37 points 2 months ago

The rule of internet polls is that the funniest answer is always over-represented.

[–] Flamekebab@piefed.social 34 points 2 months ago

I have five users, max, and barely any files. I don't know which one Nextcloud AIO uses and I don't care. There's no wrong answer for such a small deployment. It uses whatever database Nextcloud felt was sensible as the default. They know more about picking the right tool for their requirements than I do.

If I'm building something for myself, then I care.

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 29 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Isn't that the whole point of containerised solutions? Having some pre-setup, auto-updating solution with very little requirement to dive into the details like what your database is and which dependencies you need to manage...

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[–] nshibj@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

*18% of the people who answered a poll on Mastodon

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[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 months ago

Theres heaps of hosted nextcloud services. Those users wouldn't know.

[–] 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com 17 points 2 months ago

Nextcloud is pushed as an easy to use docker setup these days, heck most people I know who "use" it don't do much with it at all so what database it is using is gonna be way back in their list of priorities...
Plus the users outweigh the admins surely (as in those that just install then forget)

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Honestly, does it matter to a regular user?
There will be some that do matter, if I were to run NC I would use Lite because why throw the data to another process just to write it to a disk when I only have a single node.

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[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Where's the option for "what's a database?"

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[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

Since Nextcloud stores your actually data on the disk, it doesn’t actually matter all that much tbh

[–] m33@lemmy.zip 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Users is the right word here, not admin, not sysadmin, not owner. Docker pull docker up users that’s it

[–] themurphy@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Also just users. No docker or anything, just using the system someone else setup for them.

NextCloud is used everywhere, also in commercial use.

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[–] Horta@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 2 months ago

If some of them are users rather than admins, it makes sense and maybe it's a good sign that they don't have to know in order to use the service.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 10 points 2 months ago

Well that's kind of misleading, right? If they didn't set one up, then it's probably SQLite. But if they did set one up, that was years ago, and who cares what it is, if it's working.

[–] justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 months ago

I mean.. I set it up many many years ago... Without looking it up I can also just guess.

[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And 46% have no idea what a database is.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 7 points 2 months ago

it's a spreadsheet right?

[–] idefix@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I don't even know myself because I installed it via YunoHost

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[–] dude@lemmings.world 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I’ve made a choice a while ago while deploying Nextcloud. Now I don’t care, as I trust myself that I have opted for something reasonable which was hopefully not SQLite

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[–] Postimo@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Honestly I think if there is a hope for greater detach from "The Cloud" more broadly, it's a testament to nextcloud that folks that don't even know enough to know what DB they are running are able to run a server, and host things well enough to consider themselves users.

shhhThis statement brought was to you by someone that set up nextcloud and had no clue what DB it was using.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago

I can think of few things more boring than databases. I just want my files synced and stored.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Who cares.
I'm only on MariaDB because I have brain worms, I have so little data on there SQLite would have been fine. 🪱 🪱 🪱

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[–] NENathaniel@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes that's me. I have no idea what my Nextcloud uses

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