Listen. I hate google or any trade-based good/service. When you want something in return for what you offer, is not good... I have created a manjaro spin - see tromjaro.com/ - and I've used Linux for many years now. I also curate through thousands of Linux apps to find trade-free ones. I wrote books, made videos, documentaries, etc. about how much I hate these trade-based services like Google. But ....

So. We have this situation: MOM has hundreds of thousands of photos and videos. They are not organized. She wants them on her phone and laptop. Synced. Magically. She wants to share them on Facepalm or whatever networks. She wants to be able to do some simple editing too (rotate, crop, luminosity). She needs a simple interface and a simple solution overall. She does not understand much about computers. She thinks Facebook is the Internet, and a Fire Fox does not exist despite her using it daily.

My parents :)

They both use TROMjaro Linux as their daily distros for many years now.

So I want to help MOM deal with her photos. She basically take photos and videos with her phone, a lot of them, and wants an easy access to them. I tried many Linux apps and sync methods, and all are not sufficient. Most gallery apps do not allow you to set it up to keep an eye on a particular folder for new additions, and the ones who do are either broken or work but lack other features.

What I managed to do:

Install Syncthing on the Phone and Laptop. Sync her phone's camera folder with a local folder on her laptop. Then use FreeFileSync to one-way sync this local folder to one on her external HDD where all of the photos are (I had to involve cron jobs for this to work...). I do this so that she has a copy of them on her machine, since she can't store so much on her phone. This way, if she deletes the photos from her phone, they wont be deleted from her external HDD. So now we have an external HDD with all of her photos and videos. I then use Shotwell as the photo gallery app and set it up to keep an eye on that entire drive.

Great! Great? ...

This is how it looks like:

Not bad. Except for a few very annoying things.

• If she wants to see the photos from 2010 she can't just click 2010. She needs to also click the month, and the day....
  

  

  
  This is really annoying. You can't see all of your photos from a particular year....
• She can't edit them. Well....Shotwell has a super basic editor that is kinda ancient, but the issue is that whatever changes she does, Shotwell does not change them for the photo itself, but for Shotwell...nondestructive photo editing. I have no clue what is this useful for. Basically you edit the photo but is only inside Shotwell...forever. The second option I set up for her is to right click a photo and edit with an external editor like GThumb. GThumb is great for simple editing. But to use 2 apps for such simple things....

Not to mention Shotwell is super slow...

So yeah we have to do gymnastics. At times the Syncthing app on her phone does not work and needs a restart, at times her external HDD disconnects (because she moves the laptop), so I am always on call to help her out.

Online alternatives?

I looked and looked at online alternatives...but can't find anything that works well or is cheaper than google photos. If I am to setup a NextCloud for her it would cost me twice as much + a lot of work. Plus, what about backups ha!? Currently she syncs the HDD to another one on my computer....local backups...with Syncthing... If NextCloud would be cheaper and had a decent photos apps I would consider trying.

I am tired.

I really tried to find a trade-free solution for this. With local drives, with open source software....but for so many photos and her needs, that are (let's be honest) similar to what most people need, then I honestly will go for a 10 Euros a month google photos subscription for her... She will have 2TB of storage, an app that integrates perfectly fine with her Android phone, a webapp for the laptop. A really good photo viewer, editor, and manager. It is super simple to use and works well. She will have the photos everywhere....backups are not an issue, google takes care of that...

I hate to do this but after years of trying I am tired and I cannot find a decent solution. If anyone knows a better way to do this, let me know....