I did some seraching on the all mighty web and it has informed me that LXLE linux distros have syncthing already installed. So i downloaded an iso of the newest 64 bit edition of LXLE linux and its not listed in there, it used to be under the “internet” folder.
Im thinking of using an older pc for a 3rd implementation of syncthing and LXLE linux seems to be a decent choice.
Im assuming the web gui of syncthing is alot like synctrayzor for windows ?
thanks
LXLE is based on Ubuntu, which is in turn based on Debian so the catalog of software packages should overlap a lot.
Neither Debian or Ubuntu preinstall Syncthing, but it’s readily available via their graphical software installers.
Alternatively, the following APT command on all Linux distros that use the deb package format can be used:
sudo apt install syncthing
If for some unusual reason LXLE doesn’t include Syncthing in its repository, Syncthing also has an APT repo: https://apt.syncthing.net/
Definitely. LXLE uses LXDE for its desktop environment which is much lighter than GNOME and KDE.
If your older PC is less than 10 years old and has at least 4GB of RAM, it might be worth trying Ubuntu or another similar distro to see if GNOME or KDE is a better fit (a lot depends on how comfortable you are with Linux in general).
(DistroWatch.com is a great reference tool for searching and comparing Linux distros).
Yes, SyncTrayzor bundles Syncthing and provides a system tray utility for Microsoft Windows, so the web GUI is identical to the one from the official Syncthing installer.
thanks for all the answers. I used to be a linux admin RHCT about 12 years ago, but i switched to aerospace and medical engineering haha. SO it has been a fat minute since i have used linux.
I just got my old win xp setup with ssh server and im using sftp drive to map the windows xp drive to all my windows 10 machines.
But i want a 3rd implementation of syncthing for all my most important files that need to always stay current and synced.
im am used to the synctrazor via windows, so i need to make sure once i install syncthing on linux, i at least have a gui that resembles what i have been using haha.
this app has been a life saver.
is there a full blown tutorial on how to use and install on ubuntu based systems? a tutorial you trust that wont steer me in a weird direction? i am using lxle in a vm workstation at the moment.
thanks
Excellent! Saves me a lot of typing. 
The fact that you used the term “distros” made me think that you had at least some Linux background. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was if a GUI or a CLI was your go-to preference.
Ditto. It’s much easier to shift between platforms when there’s a consistent UI for something that I don’t look at every day – if I have check it every day, then it’s unreliable.
I’ve seen some user comments about why Syncthing doesn’t have a native GUI instead of a web-based one, but having developed apps using various graphical toolkits, it’s almost impossible to create a uniform look across platforms without the result also looking kinda ugly (ahem… Java’s AWT comes to mind).
For sure. Syncthing’s privacy aspect is a bonus to the flexibility of controlling how, what and when things sync between a variety of devices.
“Distros”, still keeping a XP workstation alive, SSH/SFTP server, virtual machines… clearly will have no problems with a tutorial that is more techie-oriented… 
Syncthing Made EASY
Channel: Tech Craft
Date: Sep 18, 2022
Time: 00:28:29
https://youtu.be/PSx-BkMOPF4
Thought you might also find this Linux distro interesting: TurnKey GNU/Linux – Syncthing
I’ve used several of TurnKey’s images. The base is Debian Linux paired with a single core app per image plus additional management scripts and interfaces as needed. Besides Syncthing, there’s LAMP, NAS, VPN and a bunch of others. Each image is kept as small as possible (often just a couple hundred megabytes) and suitable for bare-metal or VM installation.
interesting. I used to have a LAMP server and a WAMP server because i had to use a windows box with apache for some reason.
right now i use zeroTier for my vpn and i love it. works like a charm. I am using the xp machine for the ssh server and just mapped a drive via sftp. Debating if i actually like that idea, or if a ssh client is a better way. I am using the ssh server to back up files, but when your backup is 100GB and your using wifi from a friend who lives in the apartment right below my wife and i, it gets sloooow. this is why i like syncthing. yes, the initial upload and sync is slow as well, but you only need to do that once, but ST is not a backup option either. SO then i use the ssh option haha
the turnkey link, is it meaning that syncthing is its own “distro” sort of speak? IE syncthing IS the os? if so, thats awesome. just have a syncthing “NAS”
ill check out the youtube video. I just need to figure out what is going to be best. i hate backing up data but it needs to be done. I have 2 external drives that have autobackups on it, and 2 internal drives that do the same. After my univeristy deleted all my onedrive stuff, I aint doing that again haha
i am very tech oriented, but if you read my other syncthing posts, youll be like “WTF, i thought you knew tech” when you are in the middle of trying to publish a paper, become federally certified to build and launch rockets, including make fuel, tech can become very confusing to say the least haha
thanks
ugh… if I never have to use a WAMP server again it’ll be too soon… swap in Apache Tomcat instead of Perl/PHP and it’s like trying to squeeze the proverbial square peg into a round hole. 
Since you like ZeroTier, also check out Tailscale. Tailscale uses Linux’s WireGuard VPN (Google supports it in Android; ports for Windows, macOS, etc. are available) to construct a peer-to-peer mesh network.
Almost. It’s a bare minimum Debian-based Linus distro with Syncthing pre-installed as the front facing app along with Nginx as the web proxy and optional SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt, all under a 370MB footprint.
I use SSH and SFTP all day long, so Duplicacy was a natural fit. I primarily use the SFTP backend to upload backups to my NAS.
Duplicacy’s file chunking and deduplication features will definitely solve your Wi-Fi bandwidth issue, so even the initial backup will be faster than a straight SFTP transfer.
And that’s why you won’t see me posting about publishing rocketry papers, building and launching rockets – it’s purely a spectator event for me. 
I have heard of tailscale, just never used it. I might look into it more, now that my topology is getting more PC’s on it.
The turnkey is a great option. If i dont use LXLE i will use the turnkey because the app is loaded first and ready to go. Its alot like the steamlink linux distro i used once on a old system to test out streaming of games haha.
this duplicacy looks interesting and may be a solution to my problem. OR if i build the 3rd pc here on the same network, i can at least sync all the data via ethernet, then take the train to my parents house and install the turnkey server there haha.
Yeah, i have a BS in network engineering and cyber security. Did my RHCT, CCNP, security certs, the whole thing. However, for me, aerospace was more of a fit. I realized that network engineering was a hobby i liked and not a job i liked haha.
I’ve been using WireGuard since the pull request was approved for the Linux kernel, and Tailscale since it was in beta.
I originally had a DIY hub-and-spoke VPN configuration before adding Tailscale’s mesh VPN. Tailscale provides a daemon/service that manages WireGuard endpoints so it’s very lightweight (< 23MB on an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS workstation).
Yup, the SteamOS distro is a great example.
Valve’s Steam Deck portable game console runs a modified Arch Linux with the Steam client. Because Steam Deck supports 3rd-party apps via Flatpaks, some users have been using SyncThingy (essentially the Linux variant of SyncTrayzor for Windows) to sync settings and other files between devices.
It wouldn’t be all that different from my current setup. I take care of the computer backups for my parents using a combination of Duplicacy and Syncthing, plus it also gives me a simple way to have an offsite backup for my files.
For me, computing started out as a hobby. Went to college for chemical engineering and ended up with a computer engineering degree. So instead of test tubes, centrifuges, Bunsen burners and fume hoods in labs; it’s been network cables, switches/routers, firewalls, servers and PDUs in data centers. No regrets. 
Hmmm… Seems to me that Turnkey is abandoned. Their about page says they use Debian 8 “Jessie” which is many years old (current Debian stable version is 11) and their forum is 100% filled with spam.
SyncTrayzor essentially displays the Web GUI in its built-in browser, so it will be exactly the same if you open it in any Web browser directly. However, if you need other features, e.g. a tray icon that would indicate whether Syncthing is running, etc., then you may also want to have a look at https://github.com/Martchus/syncthingtray (which itself is a cross-platform solution).
No, definitely not abandoned. I know because I maintain several servers at my employer’s data centers that run various editions of TurnKey Linux. The servers I’ve recently upgraded are based on Debian Bullseye/11 for TurnKey Core. Here’s a console screenshot from a VM I’ve been testing during the past few days:
Was the about page you saw this one?: https://turnkeylinux.org/benefits.
If so, yeah it’s a bit outdated. It’s the never ending bane of website maintenance – the bigger a website gets the harder it is to keep up with updates. Toss in docs, a wiki, GitHub, etc. and you end up needing an army of people just to update content. It’s not unlike for Syncthing where there’s been a long discussion about having a wiki to help better manage all of the useful how-to related posts on this forum.
As for TurnKey’s forum, I don’t use it much so I can’t speak about the spam there, but as with most open-source projects that have been around for years (10+ for TurnKey Linux), it’s a tricky balance with keeping a forum open to all and having enough moderators to deal with the eventual spam (one look at the history page of popular Wikipedia articles and you’ll see edits that fix spam and other efforts to deface the content).
So it’d be great if TurnKey could keep every webpage description current and make its forum spam resistant, but since the project is a volunteer effort that relies on donations and doesn’t charge for their work, I’m willing to give them plenty of slack.
wow, we are the oposite of eachother haha. My buddy is a chem engineer and he got board of the lab work like you, but he decided to work for thiokol down the street from my house, and he is the project manager for the Artimus rockets.
I worked IT for about 10 years before making the switch to aerospace. I still enjoy it but i could not do it as a career. my brain wouldnt let me haha
ok, now onto syncthing. I installed the turnkey on vmware, and for the life of me, it will not run. it keeps crashing my entire PC. I got it installed ONCE and it only opened up a blue screen that listed IP addresses. It did not load a gui at all. Am i supposed to point a browser from another machine at the 192.168.114.30:8384 address?
thanks
Yup, that’s what I was thinking too. 
While I still like chemistry, I realized working in a lab or similar research environment for a lifetime wasn’t for me. Thankfully, I was also into electronics and computing so shifting directions wasn’t difficult (plus the internet going mainstream was lucky timing).
Yes, it can be a bit of a shock the first time booting a TurnKey Linux distro. By default the console/terminal is just a simple text-based splash screen listing the URIs to SSH, the Webmin web-based server management interface, the web-based terminal / “web shell”, plus whichever network service is available.
So if the VM picked up it’s IP address via DHCP and presented the URL 192.168.114.30:8384, just point a web browser at it to access the familiar looking Syncthing web GUI.
The general idea is that you don’t need to SSH into the server to do any maintenance via a CLI. The text-based dialog offers menus for some basic things such as changing from DHCP to static IP, changing the hostname, etc., while the web-based GUI(s) take care of the rest.
With regards to crashing the entire PC, that wouldn’t be due to TurnKey Linux itself. It could be a video driver issue with VMware. I’d try removing and reinstalling VMware (Workstation or Player?) including any updates.
Are you using the OVA image or installing from the ISO into the VM?
yeah its a video driver is my guess. AMD has had some bad updates lately.
I just load the ISO into vmware and install it
A screenshot from my laptop:
Hardware:
The window on the upper right is TurnKey Linux (Syncthing edition) installed from the ISO into a VM running on VirtualBox.
Once TurnKey Linux booted into its default configuration screen, I launched Firefox with separate windows open to each of the listed URLs for the Webmin web interface, a web-based shell prompt, and Syncthing’s web GUI (the latter is accessible from both https://192.168.0.3:8384 – and because of the pre-configured Nginx acting as a reverse web proxy – also at https://192.168.0.3/ (both port 80 and port 443 are open).
yup, thtas the screen i had. haha. i figured it was a splash screen to have me point a browser to haha.
The first time I installed a TurnKey Linux distro I was also surprised by the very 90’s / MS-DOS looking screen.
It doesn’t take long to appreciate how much effort the TurnKey developers put into making their distros into plug-and-play appliances.
As you already know, TurnKey’s text-based installer is also pretty retro in comparison to other distros, but with just two quick screen prompts, it’s one of the easiest distros to install.
install only sucked because of the vmware crash that i kept getting haha.
I have some OLD dell pc’s from about 10 years ago. I might 3d print some new cases for them or get some new cases and make them into syncthing servers using the turnkey.
Does the turn key need to be 64 bit because these MIGHT be 32bit CPU’s
… for several years I beta tested for VMware so I saw my fair share of system crashes (mostly on Windows, but sometimes on Linux too).
What eventually pushed me to switch to VirtualBox was the need to use a Linux distro that wasn’t a year or two behind because VMware’s kernel stub was frequently incompatible with newer Linux kernels.
There was a time when VirtualBox didn’t have feature parity with VMware Workstation, but the two are close enough that most users won’t notice.
Unless those Dells were built more than 10 years before you bought them, chances are they have 64-bit CPUs because AMD released the first one in 2003 (Intel licensed the x86-64 instruction set from AMD for its own CPUs).
AFAIK, although Debian still releases 32-bit versions of its distro, TurnKey only uses the x86-64 versions.
But even if you did set up a PC with a 32-bit Linux distro, if you have a lot of files to sync, the 4 GB memory limit might require system tuning to run well (search for posts on this forum for users with NAS appliances with 1 or 2 GB of memory).
