How to create your own cloud with Linux

We've prodded cloud computing from a technical point of view several times nevertheless, from a user's perspective, it's a lot more than your always-available hard drive on the internet. It's omnipresent across platforms and, with the proliferation of smartphones, even devices.

Apple created a lot of buzz when it announced its iCloud service before this year. It's designed to enable users to store content so it's accessible from all of their devices.

Guess what? With Linux you can do it better. In the following article we'll show you how to harness the power of the cloud to access all types of data stored on remote services on your devices - from Chrome on your office laptop running Ubuntu, to Firefox on your Fedora desktop at home, to your Android mobile phone.

And during Apple's iCloud is limited, in that it's for users of Apple's products, we'll look at services that cater for all the three major desktops, namely Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

The end of it all

At the end of it all, you'll be able to sync bookmarks and carry your browser passwords from your netbook at home, to the laptop in your office, to a lunch meeting on your Android phone. We'll show you how you can send and receive email on any device from all your accounts, whether on a webmail service or hosted on your own server, and always have your calendars and contacts with you.

Strip away the buzz about cloud computing and all you've got is a web application that gives you the look and feel of a native desktop app, however runs inside a browser and is hosted on a remote web server halfway around the world.

Peppermint OS, which uses ICE, is a site-specific browser based on Chromium, which as well makes web apps feel more like their desktop brethren. Web-based services have become synonymous with cloud computing; you can't mention one without the other. Nevertheless there's more to cloud computing than feeding off services that live on remote web servers.

Wouldn't it be great if you could access your day in day out desktop apps, from anywhere, on any type of machine, irrespective of its hardware prowess? And when we say desktop apps, we mean both Linux and Windows.

What Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop is designed for

That's specifically what Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop is designed for. Afterwards you've got it set up, you can serve as many native Windows and Linux apps to as many concurrent users. And it gets better: in the true spirit of the cloud, all that's needed to access the desktop apps is a web browser.

Ulteo OVD relies on two elements - a Session Manager and an Application Server - to create virtual desktops that run inside web browsers. To deliver both Linux and Windows apps, you need to run application servers inside until further notice one instance of each OS.

Setting it up isn't too much hassle, nevertheless you will need to be familiar with the network setup. It's ideal for installations that need to deliver a mixture of apps and are willing to take a hit in performance. Since the apps are served from within remote application servers, make sure these machines are powerful enough to minimise the performance penalty. If you run multiple instances of app servers, you can easily balance the load between them.

Example of the latter

Google Docs is an example of the latter. This free service lets you create and share text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings and more in various formats, including PDF. It's as well available as an Android app, so you connect to it and work on the documents from your mobile phone.

Besides creating and editing documents, you can use the Google Docs Android app to upload images to your account. The browser-based version as well enables you to upload PDFs. All the documents created either on the web interface or uploaded from your phone are kept on Google's servers, and are along these lines accessible from wherever you connect. Additionally, you can share these documents with other Google Docs users, who can in turn share their docs with you.

The basic free version of Google Docs allows up to 1GB of free storage and you can purchase more space starting from $5 per year for 20GB. In its current form, Google Docs requires an active internet connection for you to work on your documents, nevertheless the ability to work offline, which leverages the HTML5 capabilities of the Chrome browser, is about to be rolled out.

The Java- based ThinkFree Office suite

Another similar option is the Java- based ThinkFree Office suite, which is pre-installed on several Android-based handsets.

A more comprehensive cross-platform solution for backing up and syncing files is SpiderOak. You can mix the web apps to get out of a sticky situation. For instance, what if you need a file that's on your desktop at home, and all you have is your Android phone?

The TeamViewer remote desktop viewer on your desktop

If you have the TeamViewer remote desktop viewer on your desktop, you can connect to it using the TeamViewer app on the Android device, copy the file into Dropbox or share it via SpiderOak, and it will automatically be synced to your phone.

For those who you work on the move, access to your emails and address books is vital if you want to stay productive. You need to be able to sync them across your office and home computers, across operating systems and to your mobile phone.

Online email, on purpose, is globally accessible and requires nothing more than a web browser, nevertheless there are tools that enable you to use it offline, either on your laptop or on your phone, and at the time sync the two when you go online.

Accessing Gmail on your Android device is a no-brainer, since these phones ship with a Gmail app that helps you set up multiple Gmail accounts, and even downloads messages for offline viewing.

Android phones as well enable you to sync email accounts from your hosted email server via IMAP. You'll find several IMAP email customers on the Android market.

The most feature-packed and

K-9 Mail is one of the most feature-packed and, alongside IMAP, as well supports POP3 and Microsoft Exchange Server. K-9 as well works with the Android Privacy Guard app and enables you to send encrypted emails.

As then as email, once you've set up a Gmail account on your Android device, your address book and contacts are as well automatically synced. Any additions or changes to your Gmail calendar or contacts will automatically be reflected on your phone, and vice versa.

The CalDAV standard

Google Calendar supports the CalDAV standard, so you can sync it with Microsoft Outlook using the Google Calendar Sync utility, as then as with Apple's iCal or Mozilla's Sunbird.

After you've downloaded and installed K-9 from the Android market, start the setup process by entering your email address and password.