A simple guide to installing Nextcloud with snap on Linux

The easiest way to deploy Nextcloud on your Linux system.

Recently, I was tasked to help a local medical office find a secure way to store medical images. Their existing Windows machine was aging quickly, and they needed a reliable replacement. I considered several solutions, including TrueNAS, OwnCloud, Nextcloud, and even a simple Samba share. After some research, Nextcloud seemed like the best fit for this situation, and it is HIPAA compliant.

The next question was deployment. I initially experimented with building a server using the Turnkey Linux Nextcloud ISO in VirtualBox. I also looked into Docker, but ultimately discovered the simplest option: Installing Nextcloud using snap on Fedora KDE Plasma. This turned out to be the fastest and most straightforward path.

Read more: NextCloud’s long-term vision, data privacy, AI features, and more

Install snap and Nextcloud on Fedora

First, I installed snap on Fedora KDE Plasma 42:

sudo dnf install snapd

After installing snap, I added Nextcloud:

sudo snap install nextcloud

Next, I logged out and back in to ensure snap’s paths were properly updated. You can also restart your system to accomplish the same thing.

With snap installed, I opened a browser and navigated to:

http://localhost

Here, I created my admin account by entering a username and password, then clicking Install.

Once the installation completed, Nextcloud prompted me to accept the default recommended apps.

After the apps were installed, my Nextcloud instance was ready to go.

Making Nextcloud accessible on your network

By default, this snap installation only works on localhost, meaning only the local machine can access it. Since I wanted other computers on the same network to use Nextcloud, I needed to modify the configuration to recognize the server’s IP address.

With previous installs, I modified the config.php directly, but with snap, configuration is handled differently. Fortunately, I found clear instructions in the project’s GitHub repository. I opened a terminal and ran:

sudo nextcloud.occ config:system:set overwritehost --value="youripaddress"

Be sure to replace youripaddress with the actual IP address or hostname of your machine. The project repository also has instructions for HTTPS port configuration.

Next, I made sure port 80 was open on my firewall so other devices on the network could access the server. As always, make sure you open any other necessary ports on your firewall to allow LAN access. 

Read more: 10 essential networking commands for sysadmins

Wrap-up

Nextcloud is open source and licensed under GPL v3.0. The project offers excellent documentation, and the snap wiki is a helpful resource for additional configuration options.

While I installed Nextcloud on Fedora, this snap package is available for many popular Linux distributions, including Arch, Ubuntu, RHEL, Debian, openSUSE, CentOS, and others. 

More from We Love Open Source

• NextCloud’s long-term vision, data privacy, AI features, and more
• My top 5 must-have apps on Fedora 41 KDE Plasma
• Exploring Fedora KDE on a new Lenovo laptop
• 10 essential networking commands for sysadmins
• 10 open source tools you can start using today

This article is adapted from “Nextcloud with a snap” by Don Watkins, and is republished with permission from the author.