Today, there are many options for synchronizing our information across our different devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone), which are the popular cloud services . And although they have very good security measures, not everyone trusts them.
This is because, ultimately, our information is already in the possession of third parties . For this reason, there are services that allow us to implement a personal cloud , and today we are going to talk about one of them.
About Syncthing
Syncthing is a free, open-source, cross-platform tool that can be used to synchronize files and/or folders between networked computers.
Unlike other synchronization tools, such as Google Drive, pCloud , Dropbox, etc., Syncthing transfers data directly from one system to another, and is completely secure and private.
All data will be stored on your system so you can have full control over your files and folders, as none of them are stored on any third-party system.
It also gives us the possibility to choose the place where it is stored, if it is shared with a third party and how it is transmitted over the Internet.
All communication is encrypted using TLS . Syncthing has a responsive and powerful WebGUI that will help users add, delete, and manage directories to be synchronized across the network.
It allows you to synchronize files from one device to another directly without having to go through an intermediary . For example, if you use Dropbox, the files will pass through Dropbox, which will be able to see what you are transferring and control how your files are transmitted over the internet.
Therefore, using Syncthing allows you to gain in security and privacy.
Security is guaranteed by encryption and authentication, as there is no central server that holds everything and can be breached.
Using Syncthing, you can synchronize multiple folders across multiple systems at once; all you need is a very stable LAN/WAN connection and sufficient disk space on your systems.
It is compatible with all modern operating systems, including GNU / Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and of course Android.
How to install Syncthing on Linux?
In order to install this tool on your system, you must follow the following steps according to the Linux distribution you are using.
If you are a user of Arch Linux , Manjaro, Antergos or any distribution derived from Arch Linux, we can install the application from the official repositories.
sudo pacman -S syncthing
In case we want to install the GTK version we must type:
sudo pacman -S syncthing-gtk
Now , for those who are users of Fedora and derivatives, we install with:
sudo dnf -i syncthing
For those who are users of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint or any distribution derived from these, we must add the following repository to the system.
We must open a terminal in the system for it and type:
curl -s https://syncthing.net/release-key.txt | sudo apt-key add –
echo "deb https://apt.syncthing.net/ syncthing stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/syncthing.list
Once the repository has been added, we must update our list of packages and install with:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install syncthing
For those who are openSUSE users, the application can be installed with one click from the openSUSE software page.
They only need to go to the following link.
Finally, for the rest of the Linux distributions we can install this application with the support of Snap packages.
We must have the support to be able to install applications of this type in the system.
We simply need to type the following into the terminal:
sudo snap install syncthing
How to run Syncthing on the system?
To start using this application, just run from the terminal:
syncthing
Once this is done, the browser will open the web page from where we can configure the application.
If this does not happen, simply open your browser and type the following into the address bar:
localhost:8384