Totally unusable everywhere I need it

I would love to implement this in several groups I belong to, but it’s impossible.
End users can’t install Syncthing at all.
I’m a Linux end-user (not a developer, nor enthusiast–and yes, we really do exist) and have been running a Linux desktop for well over a decade, after an hour of tying to get this running on Linux, I’m giving up. I can’t imagine trying to explain your install process to a Windows end-user, most of them don’t even know how to change their windows password.

The most important thing you can do is write installers that your grandmother can use–for every platform.

Have you tried just running the binary or following the docs?

https://docs.syncthing.net/intro/getting-started.html

Yes, syncthing in it’s current state probably does not appeal to people who can’t change their password.

I don’t think writing an installer for a single statically linked binary is immensely useful, as all the installer would do, is copy exactly one file to a location of your choice which you can already do by just downloading the binary to the location you want.

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Can you specify with what your are struggling? For windows user it is syncthing.net -> Native GUIs & Integration -> Synctrazor -> Download and run installer For Linux users there is multiple variants depending on your system: For some distros Syncthing is already packaged for the standard installation utility/repo, so you proceed as you always would. Otherwise you have to download the tar archive, extract it and run the binary - not very involved either.

I fully agree that the basic Syncthing distribution is a “WTF?” experience for the common Windows/Mac user. I’m surprised that as a seasoned Linux user you are uncomfortable with the Syncthing distribution, though.

It’s essentially “install like any other package; run it; the GUI starts in your browser”. It might be sort of uncommon for the GUI to start in your browser, but it’s not like this is particularly standardized on Linux to begin with…

On Windows or Mac though, do use one of the wrappers to get a more native experience.

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I think that it would be nice to have an embedded terminal interface that is something like those ncurses interfaces or similar termianl interfaces that some apps like Mutt, Wicd,Tig,Lfm etc offers. That way when the binary runs it runs inside this terminal gui with some info, what is going on and basic info on how to modify etc.

OK thanks everyone! All the Linux instructions I was looking at included the console instructions for running as a service, presumably on a server. With your comments, here, I realized that those were totally unwanted for the typical desktop install.

So the Ubuntu installer works nearly flawlessly–all that should be added is a menu link to http://127.0.0.1:8384/

On Windows it would be trivial to use a freeware installer, to unzip into c:/Program_Files/Syncthing, and paste a shortcut into the startup folder. …and that same menu link to http://127.0.0.1:8384/

Thanks again, I really appreciate the help!

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This would require a GUI in order to run ST. Given the number of people who look into running as a service… Not everyone has a GUI available.

That’s what synctrayzor is, and it’s wonderful.

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My first experience of syncthing was also, “wtf no installer/launcher - only cli?” moment. So I started writing my own for Mac OS X. It is deeply hidden in the documentation for first-time users. Probably syncthing would benefit for Windows/Mac platforms to have a ready-to-go installer instead of unzipping, tweaking the system “and get it running”. It is not bad but it requires some clicking and typing around.

Probably the project main focus is to get to a stable and usable point, installers and wrappers are different concerns. But it should not be to hard to hookup a NSIS installer for windows. And distribute a .app for mac (xor-gate/syncthing-macosx).

I still struggle a bit on this when I try to motivate people to try syncthing instead of dropbox or some other crappy alternative. This is showstopper for most people (power users excluded).

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I think we already have enough wrappers that are ready for use, the main problem seems to be in finding them. We could improve this on the website, by showing only one big download button depending on your platform. So if you open syncthing.net on Windows, you get a button that directly downloads Synctrayzor, on Android you get a link to Google Play, and so on. Alternative wrappers etc should be somewhat hidden to make the decision easier for new users.

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Maybe it’s a Good Thing that such people are not using Syncthing yet. Imagine all those people who don’t know how to change their password flooding the forum with questions.

When Syncthing is stable, then yes the website could offer easy to find GUI wrappers / installers.

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The website has recently been changed, so now the “Native GUIs & Integrations” are the first options, with Synctrayzor for Windows, Syncthing-GTK for cross-plattform and the Android app. Still not as easy as a big download button, but way better than before.

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I totally have missed this, I’m not visiting the mainpage often. This is a good improvement! I agree with you all, syncthing still needs to mature and is indeed usable for power users.

Hi, I just heard about syncthing and looked it up and wanted to provide my feedback on a constructive way. I am a computer engineer and so pretty advanced with computers and Linux. It took me a while to figure out which file I needed to install syncthing (about 5 mins). It was fairly easy to do once I read thru the documentation but the very fact that you need to read thru documentation to understand how/what to install is the problem.

If you look at other software sites as an example, there is usually a download tab, and then asks you what OS. You click windows and then download the file and execute.

If possible, could you consider just redesigning the website so that a layman can use it. The software and installer is perfect, can you just make it one but button to download for each OS would any options. I think all the GUI options confuse everybody.

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Am I missing something?

image

Linux is mentioned, and we do have like thirtysix Linux packages. A MIPS user will probably know what they’re looking for, but someone just running Linux on their computer and not geeking out about an odd architecture and recompiling their kernel every other day might not be sure if they are “64 bit” or “AArch64” or what. :wink:

We should probably simplify this to just Windows / Linux / Mac, 64 bit intel only. And then an expando with “I’m running something old or oddball, give me all the choices!”.

Would also cut down on people accidentally running the 32 bit version because they think they don’t need the extra 32 bits or think the 64 bit version has more overhead or whatever.

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