I think you're making a category error: files are an interface, they don't actually store anything (the underlying filesystem may or may not do that). Obvious counterexamples to "just store things in files" are /proc on Linux, pifs ( https://github.com/philipl/pifs ) and Plan9.
Note that Perkeep provides a FUSE interface, i.e. you can use files.
Being slightly less facetious, it depends on the filesystem. Files can easily disappear if, say, a disk crashes or there's a network outage.
Those problems can be avoided if we make backups and distribute copies across several disks and machines, but that gives us a synchronisation problem:
- If something gets renamed during an outage, how do we know that it was a rename rather than a brand new file?
- If we find that two nodes have different content in files with the same name/path, which one is "correct"?
- If we don't have much local storage (say, a netbook or a 'phone or a raspberrypi), how can we take part in the storage?
- How can we cache things to avoid remotely accessing the same data over and over?
- How can we keep data self-contained, i.e. without needing external metadata/keys/parity info/etc.?
These are hard problems, and Perkeep is a very promising solution to some of them.
Note that Perkeep provides a FUSE interface, i.e. you can use files.
Being slightly less facetious, it depends on the filesystem. Files can easily disappear if, say, a disk crashes or there's a network outage.
Those problems can be avoided if we make backups and distribute copies across several disks and machines, but that gives us a synchronisation problem:
- If something gets renamed during an outage, how do we know that it was a rename rather than a brand new file?
- If we find that two nodes have different content in files with the same name/path, which one is "correct"?
- If we don't have much local storage (say, a netbook or a 'phone or a raspberrypi), how can we take part in the storage?
- How can we cache things to avoid remotely accessing the same data over and over?
- How can we keep data self-contained, i.e. without needing external metadata/keys/parity info/etc.?
These are hard problems, and Perkeep is a very promising solution to some of them.