joeldebruijn

Is "choosing which files and folders" an upfront configuration thing, or does it happen "on the fly" when opening a file?

It's a type of integration with local file handling:

• you see every folder and file in explorer / finder.
• they are just filenames but without the data
• they act normal and can be copy pasted renamed etc
• the moment a file is opened the first time, the data gets synced locally.

I use it to connect to rather large folders (bigger then my SSD) because it only takes up space of the files in use.

I deleted my comments seeing the ending side note about NC.

Does the MacOS NC app do files-on-demand?

One of the few times I miss Files-on-demand for Win11. Connect an Office365 library with 500 GB to my laptop with an 128 GB harddrive. Integrates with file explorer, only caches local what you open, after a while you can "free space", meaning deleting local cache version. NextCloud has the same on Win11 because its an OS feature.

Did you over engineer? Yes! Also: this is very cool!!

For my family my setup slightly different for reasons in other comments:

• do change browsers away from Chrome or Edge
• do change search engines
• allow cookies
• drop tracking surveillance traffic at the network level with something like pihole or nextdns

Thanks everybody, I learned a ton these 2 days. Like a ' jump' in understanding. Not only the specific answer to my concrete question but also on a conceptual level as well.

The thing that makes Linux next level for me now is the extra 'abstraction layer'.

Thing is, for me, digital files always were as tangible as the analog object they represent. A digital document is as 'real' as a paper document. An email as real as a letter. But untill now files where 'real' digital artefacts. And thats ... a bit different with 'virtual' files, sort of.

Anyway, new concepts to explore which is great!

Yep, I learned they have 'portals' for file-managing on their own.

Thanks, gives me direction in which way to do research.