SciPiTie

Ahh g I don’t use paperless as an exclusive document storage but as a pure manager. It searches and tags but doesn’t have exclusivity over any files but it’s own indices!

It doesn’t provide more value than jellyfin in that regard - make it visible and accessible.

Worst case I have all my OCRed documents as raw files which I can migrate to whereever.

Files still exist. For my case encrypted as well. My backups roll on the data, not the container.

But I’m not trying to convince you, I tried answering the questions :)

And two answer your last question clearly: I survived before paperless, I’d get along without it. I find a new tool to mitigate my manual labor as good as possible - if that’s not possible then jo harm done. I know I’m flexible, I can learn new tools and I’m never vendor or tool locked-in. I have a high level of self confidence when it comes to my tool chain and how I’d adapt any part of it - from password manager to cloud storage and my mail flow.

To be honest I couldn’t self host anything if I’d had the fear of being lost if a tool is discontinued.

For me it was a few hours wrapping my head around how paperless ngx works and its setup. I had a folder structure as you described already on my Nextcloud so I just configured paperless to observe it for new files.

Where I spent more time then reasonable with was the tagging - you can automate it based on… Well everything.

Now I just let it suggest me tags based on my existing documents plus add a NEW tag to the ones I’ve never reviewed. That’s just a reminder for me though to review tags when searching, I don’t actively re tag new uploads.

If you have a docker environment I suggest just pulling a container up3, throwing all your documents in it and see if it would save you time or cost you time. Would be an hour well spent!personally the OCR alone is it worth it for me - my country still loves paper letters and being able to copy text out of that is awesome (IBAN, account numbers, etc - all the stuff that’s suspectible to typos).

The three letters OCR, tagging, fuzzy search and ease of use are the ones for me.

I never needed the date for a letter but quite often its context for example.

Your suggestion just digitalizes physical folders. If that’s enough for you ok - but you’re missing out.

Isn’t you disagreeing proving OPs point concerning the splitting of the community? :)

That said: I’m completely new to nix and just like op described couldn’t get my hands on in depth primary documentation or references - could you help me there and point me to a good starting point?

Thanks in advance!