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Dropbox Brings Back Support for ZFS, XFS, Btrfs and eCryptFS on Linux

272 points by logix 7y ago

jhack 7y ago
It was a stupid and arbitrary decision to begin with. Glad support is back but I don't think I'll be back.
danieldk 7y ago
Too late. I have left Dropbox because of their stance on Linux filesystems, price bump with unnecessary features, and the continuous badgering to upgrade to Dropbox business. It's great change though for those who are still on Dropbox. Their sync is top-notch.
- duiker101 7y ago
  What did you move to? I like Dropbox I just find it crazy that they (or no other company AFAIK) allows me to sync folders on my SD-card on my Android phone.
  - jumbopapa 7y ago
    I would recommend looking into Nextcloud.
    - fock 7y ago
      though nextcloud definitely is a lot more than: "a folder to sync your files". but hey, apparently even VC in search of growth sometimes notices that their path is not the best.
    - duiker101 7y ago
      I did, I found it too clunky for my taste unfortunately
    - pizza234 7y ago
      I used Nextcloud/Owncloud in the past, but it's a mediocre product from an engineering perspective. I've found several bugs, the most ridiculous of which was to get a conflict on a file... while using only one client.
  - danieldk 7y ago
    Resilio Sync for file sync, with a local NAS and a Hetzner VPN as read-only encrypted peers. SmugMug for sharing photos with family.
  - tdurden 7y ago
    Resilio Sync [1] 1. https://www.resilio.com/individuals-sync/ https://www.resilio.com/individuals-sync/
  - pritambaral 7y ago
    Not parent, but I'm looking into Syncthing (https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing & https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net) and they document the issue and known workarounds to sharing from external SD-cards on Android: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android/wiki/Frequent...
    - lscotte 7y ago
      syncthing is a great choice, I've been happily using it for 2 or 3 years across Linux, Android, and Windows. I've never had to do anything special to use an SD card on Android.
      - pritambaral 7y ago
        > I've never had to do anything special to use an SD card on Android. It appears newer versions of Android do not provide a way for apps to access _external_ storage using ordinary POSIX APIs. SD cards can be used to back and provide "internal storage" on Android, and I don't think that is a problem (yet).
  - opencl 7y ago
    Google basically made it impossible for file syncing software to work on SD cards in modern versions of Android (IIRC since Marshmallow or maybe Nougat) unless you use the 'SD as internal storage' option which many manufacturers have disabled entirely.
- jcfrei 7y ago
  > Their sync is top-notch. Which is exactly what prevented me from switching even though I run Linux. I've tried other file synchronization products and the speed was always significantly lower.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - josteink 7y ago
    Today I synced 29000 files (44gb) from home to work with Nextcloud in less than 30 minutes. I think that’s not only more than acceptable, but at least 10x the performance I’d get from Dropbox.
- SomeHacker44 7y ago
  Yep. I removed them from my life after the 3 device limit and will.nit fo back. I will give a few bucks to Apple, Google and Microsoft for their file services for a while as I decide which one I like best.
- anxrn 7y ago
  I'm also a Dropbox on Linux user, are there other cloud storage services with better Linux client support? I was considering Google Drive but it doesn't seem to support Linux at all.
  - wh313 7y ago
    GVFS (https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/gvfs/backends https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/gvfs/backends) now provides a package that lets you log in to your Google Drive account and access it from Nautilus, but you have to be on GNOME for it.
    - xiaomai 7y ago
      This is very cool and I use it from time to time, but it's not actually keeping anything synced afaik (it's equivalent to the web ui, but very nicely integrated in gnome).
    - Arnavion 7y ago
      And KDE has kio-gdrive for the same thing with Dolphin.
  - akvadrako 7y ago
    MEGA, Seafile, NextCloud, pcloud
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    I'm using Google drive with insync which is really good but not free. https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse is also a good alternative if you're happy with mounting your google drive folder. Gnome now also has pretty well working support for this built in.
    - bad_user 7y ago
      Many people recommend Insync and while it may be good enough for people stuck with Google Drive on Linux, it doesn't match Dropbox's sync. In my experience with Insync it crashes a lot and it's very slow compared with Dropbox. And of course they have GDrive's limitations, for example the inability to do block-level sync. Recommending third party solutions is fine, but can you manage a 300 GB archive of files with them? And can you trust those solutions to not corrupt your data? I know I wouldn't because I have a hard time trusting the official clients of GDrive or OneDrive after noticing them actually corrupting my data, so no thanks.
- fluidcruft 7y ago
  Same. Inertia kept me with Dropbox all these years. It was easier to pay them than to figure out how to operate the alternatives. I'm not going to get those hours I spent migrating back--it's sunk cost now.
- programmer_dude 7y ago
  > Their sync is top-notch. Not really, occasional merge conflicts are par for the course with Dropbox. Never seen one after switching to Google drive with Insync. Dropbox is very inflexible, for example doesn't even let you choose your own folder name, doesn't work well when syncing across case-sensitive (Linux) and case-insensitive (Windows) file systems. It was a sucky experience overall. I am relieved I don't have to use it at work anymore.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    https://forums.insynchq.com/t/no-warning-when-file-conflicts-arise-danger/12559 https://forums.insynchq.com/t/no-warning-when-file-conflicts... ? Seems very dangerous for keeping data safe. And for what it's worth I've heard that google drive by itself often does the same thing.
a2tech 7y ago
After fighting with Box for a bit today I'm really happy that Dropbox still exists.
- quantumsequoia 7y ago
  What issues did you have with Box? I was considering trying them
tinyhouse 7y ago
That's good news. Happy to see Dropbox thinking about the people who stuck with them from day 1. In the past few years they have been all over the place, trying to find their next big thing and in the process also neglecting their non-enterprise customers. Their core product is still the best in the market and an important alternative to Google.
- rch 7y ago
  I feel the same way. Until recently they seemed to be deprioritizing features I cared about in favor of e.g. Paper, which seems designed for some other type of user. So, when my company was choosing a provider I didn't really have any compelling arguments I could make in favor of Dropbox. Maybe this signals that the tide has turned again.
  - elcritch 7y ago
    Exactly, I've always preferred Dropbox because unlike Google Drive, Box, etc they handled files and handled them well. The aesthetics were clean and simple (the new site looks like someone killed an eggplant and based a website on it). But I've always wondered why they don't expand more on their storage basis for new features? Say email storage and backup (with say an optional web client interface) that supported regular email clients like Thunderbird/Outlook (ok, handwavy magic outlook support). Or a password service that sync'ed via Dropbox (1Passwd was great for a long time this way until I moved to a Linux desktop from a macbook). Their MS Office integrations are actually pretty great. Paper was cute at first, but doesn't build on their storage-first basis by storing say regular markdown files somewhere.
    - wasdfff 7y ago
      I still think the killer feature that will actually stratify these perfectly similar services will be seamless entire device sync. I have my files clumsily positioned behind my onedrive folder and use shortcuts, but macos insists on the default folder locations for some things. As clumsy as it is, its still great to be able to grab any devce in the world with an internet connection and access all my files in a few mins. Refining that would change the game for this type of service.
besulzbach 7y ago
> The reason cited for this was that "a supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync". Given that extended attributes are available in most of the filesystems used in Linux today, Dropbox still hasn't answered why they decided to go "ext4-only" for a while.
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  Probably since desktop Linux users are a tiny fraction of their user base, but create the most headaches and internet outrage.
  - dev_dull 7y ago
    Relevant discussion: “Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets”[1] I feel like in open source this tends to work itself out with community patches, but with closed source it can become a real pain. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205
    - rsyring 7y ago
      I think what they may not consider is teams that have a small number of Linux users. In that case, Linux support could be required for the team to use Dropbox, even if the actual number of Linux devices is small. My point being that the 0.1% of sales might be true per device, but "supporting Linux" might actually bring more revenue than just the devices themselves would indicate because the whole team's revenue would be lost if they didn't support Linux.
      - gwbas1c 7y ago
        Doubtful. I work for a major Dropbox competitor and we don't have any Linux support. We aren't loosing any sales over Linux, nor are we under any pressure for Linux support. Typically Linux support in products like this is organic: It happens when the engineers themselves use Linux and push upwards to support it. Anyway, with the amount of testing and verification we do on our product, desktop Linux is impractical. We try to verify on as many possible user configurations as possible. (Multiple Windows versions, 32-bit and 64-bit, Multiple Mac versions, remote desktop, ect). Linux is so heterogeneous that we could only really support it if it was a large customer where we targeted their typical configurations.
Causality1 7y ago
Why would users of those file systems trust Dropbox not to just remove support again?
- akvadrako 7y ago
  It would be a bit absurd to remove support in the near future. It would make them seem very flaky.
  - esoterae 7y ago
    I'd say they got their money's worth the first time, what with the facially obvious false explanation
deleted 7y ago
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ohthehugemanate 7y ago
Fuck em. I've learned my lesson and set up my own nextcloud instance. Couldn't be happier, definitely not going back!
- velobro 7y ago
  Likewise! Been running the snap version on a $5 DO droplet for half a year now and there's been nothing making me want to go back. Sure the UX can be improved a bit, but it's been rock solid so far and gets the job done.
  - pnutjam 7y ago
    Check out the storage servers at time4vps. I have 1TB for about $15/quarter.
    - acdha 7y ago
      That’s about the same as Dropbox — do they offer versioning and minimum retention periods?
      - pnutjam 7y ago
        It's an OpenVZ virtualized VM. I can run whatever I want on it. I personally do my versioning on my master backup, which has btrfs. Then I ship a copy to the cloud, which is my machine at time4vps.
        acdha 7y ago
        Yes, my point being that you are comparing a fully-managed service to something which requires you to perform regular operational work. Since the price is the same, that seems like you're effectively valuing your time as free while getting less protection.
        pnutjam 7y ago
arisAlexis 7y ago
OK now I can go back from MEGA
- akvadrako 7y ago
  Why is Dropbox better for you than MEGA?
  - arisAlexis 7y ago
    it's only the paranoia in me of a New Zealand company founded by a guy much resembling John Mcafee in madness vs a publicly traded USA comp
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akeck 7y ago
Interesting. I absolutely love DB sync on Linux, but I cleared my data yesterday. I got tired of dealing with the ecryptfs situation and couldn't go all in on DB because of the 2TB cap. I ended up going with Amazon Drive plus ExpanDrive for now.
nottorp 7y ago
To compensate for supporting more filesystems on Linux, they are now switching to a file manager-like application instead of the unobtrusive just-sync current option: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/dropbox-silently-installs-new-file-manager-app-on-users-systems/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/dropbox-silently-ins... Luckily they haven't ported it to Linux yet :)
- noja 7y ago
  "Due to an error, some users were accidentally exposed to the new app for a short period of time."
klhugo 7y ago
Why not supporting EL7? Is it that demanding? I am running dropbox on a docker container full of hacks and tweaks...
post_break 7y ago
I wouldn't go back even if they brought back the public folder.
gapo 7y ago
Gambled away a lot of the good will they garnered over the course of years. I've moved away and doubt will be back.
- andyburke 7y ago
  Same. I moved when they wanted me to unencrypt my home directory on linux. I've had good luck with pCloud. In particular, I can exclude file patterns, which has done wonders for my typical workflow (storing lots of code).
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awill 7y ago
What a mess. Product mistakes like this generally show that the company is either desperate, or unaware of their customers. I use xfs on Arch, and dumped Dropbox for Google Drive (with Insync) the second they made this announcement. It would be a pain to migrate back, so I won't.
- VeninVidiaVicii 7y ago
  I use Arch too, with BTRFS, but made a mounted sparse file for Dropbox, which has been an utter nightmare setting up on all my computers. I'm tempted to just keep it in case they reverse course again.
- josteink 7y ago
  > What a mess. Product mistakes like this generally show that the company is either desperate, or unaware of their customers. They were very much aware of their customers. They just didn’t care. They intentionally decided to break working customer-setups, thinking it was somehow “ok” just because they got a heads-up warning. Completely disrespectful. I left for Nextcloud, and I’m not coming back.
Havoc 7y ago
Dropbox squandered all their initial goodwill & completely lost sight of what made them appealing in the first place. Plus both my logins seem to be broken now anyway - in different ways. One just straight up refuses my pass manager saved password, the other accepts it then wants a 2FA then proceeds to refuse the password that it initially accepted. I'll take somewhere else...
- sushid 7y ago
  That sounds like something is wrong with your password manager (as in _you_ didn't store your url or update your password correctly). If you're saying Dropbox's password store process has been compromised, this would be a big accusation to make with your single data point.
brightball 7y ago
I realize there’s a lot of speculation happening here, but as a long time (since beta) user who was not looking forward to moving because of the plummeting Linux support...Thank You.
mattbillenstein 7y ago
Syncthing is open source and works great - windows, osx, linux, etc...
- josteink 7y ago
  But not iOS. So for me that means Nextcloud. And that works pretty great too!
  - ahnick 7y ago
    I can't tell you how much it pains me that syncthing doesn't support iOS. I would donate money to a project that added iOS syncthing support.
    - mattbillenstein 7y ago
      I've used ios fsync() for some time.
  - mattbillenstein 7y ago
    I've used ios fsync() for some time.
    - josteink 7y ago
      Doesn't show up in the iStore for me.
cocoa19 7y ago
Too late. I already moved to a different service and it was a pain. The only thing that might bring me back is Zero knowledge privacy. There are smaller competitors that have this as a value add, but I'd trust Dropbox more, since Dropbox is a household name.
- cocoa19 7y ago
  In case you're wondering what I mean: "In the context of distributed computer systems, popularly referred to as Cloud-based computing environments, zero knowledge privacy refers to client-server relationships where a server or service is incapable of viewing a client's plain-text data." - cybersecurityforum.com
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  Which Dropbox competitors are zero knowledge?
  - ace_of_spades 7y ago
    Spideroak one. Use them for quite some time... never had any real trouble but I use it more as a backup service tbh. Customer support is pretty good though!
    - ace_of_spades 7y ago
      Why would someone downvote this comment? If you don’t like spideroak [1] that’s fine but downvoting for an informative comment seems childish. 1: https://spideroak.com/ https://spideroak.com/ Another e2e encrypted storage solution is keybase.io.
- jorangreef 7y ago
  Zero knowledge privacy requires a trusted third-party to act as escrow, i.e. to write and distribute the software. Without that, you have no guarantee that the zero knowledge crypto cannot simply be reverted.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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JshWright 7y ago
Meh, I've already moved on to other tools.
tombert 7y ago
Can someone explain to me why the choice of filesystem mattered? I would have thought that Dropbox could exist entirely in userspace with FUSE and wouldn't need anything as low-level as direct filesystem stuff. (I'm speaking out of ignorance both on how Dropbox and filesystems work).
- patmcguire 7y ago
  This is a very thorough explanation of why it matters https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/ https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/
  - tombert 7y ago
    Ah, this was a good read. Always eye-opening to see how ignorant I am to a lot of stuff in comp-sci :). Thanks!
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  xattrs was their reason, IIRC (even though other filesystems also support xattrs). ETA: > A supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync. We will keep supporting only the most common file systems that support X-attrs, so we can ensure stability and a consistent experience. [0] [0]: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Error-messages/Dropbox-client-warns-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M18382 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Error-messages/Dropbox-clien...
tripzilch 7y ago
A few weeks ago I was setting up my new laptop, and I found out that my (free) Dropbox account had gotten downgraded to only be able to sync between 3 devices ... ?! I have no idea how long they've had this rule, but I'm absolutely certain that I used to sync between more than 3 devices at some time. I mean, it's kind of Dropbox's thing to be able to do that. Three is also the absolute minimum to make Dropbox Dropbox. If it was two, it'd be a file transfer protocol between two machines. If it was one, it'd be storage. Sure I'm not a paying customer so I guess they can technically do this ... But to silently downgrade a user's account to what basically amounts to the minimal setting to demo the service, nah that's just shitty. It's just squeezing out my free account to convince me to convert to a paid account. Which I guess is their right, but the proper decent way to go about that is to make the paid option that much more desirable that you want to convert, not to squeeze out the features of the free users. Anyone know when this changed? (It could be years, I don't install Dropbox that often)
- tomku 7y ago
  Middle of March of this year: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265574/dropbox-3-device-limit-free-accounts-plus-professional https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265574/dropbox-3-device...
- writepub 7y ago
  DISCLAIMER: No association with Dropbox. There's no real justification for outrage over a free product/service. They've paid your cloud storage and associated compute bills, and continue to pay for it, for whatever your usage is - effectively paying you - which should be incentive enough. VC funded startups have (wrongfully) conditioned users into expecting the moon for $0. Just flipping the tables a bit - if you ever build your own product/service, wouldn't you want payment for the value it offers to customers?
ComputerGuru 7y ago
And now Dropbox runs a background web server so they can serve their web-based UI, at least on Windows. I can’t believe how none of these huge companies that burn through cash like there is no tomorrow can’t afford to pay an intern to write an easy-to-maintain native UI for these simple “dashboard” applications. Ugh.
- Arbalest 7y ago
  What makes you think an intern would be able to do this? A few of them might, but I imagine most wouldn't. Being able to make something easy to maintain means knowing what is difficult to maintain. Except for the sharpest, who actively learn from others, the best teacher is experience.
  - ComputerGuru 7y ago
    I fully intended that as hyperbole, but the idea was "use ready-to-use native widgets/controls to represent options/state" with as little "custom" UX as possible. The user-visible Dropbox UI is nothing more than a preferences dialog, the real "app" can be written by experts with 30 years of service and systems software expertise under their belts: it runs as an invisible background service using APIs for which well-supported cross-platform abstractions are readily available for all non-interpreted (and most interpreted) languages (inotify, channels, network io, encryption, compression, database serialization, etc). The preferences and configuration panel is not what anyone thinks of when you say "Dropbox" and does not need to be "let's use css/html to create a custom UI that does not conform to the system ux guidelines so we can shove our branding down users' throats," in turn necessitating "now we need to use a full-blown browser engine to render the UI and an always-running standalone web server to interface with the background service to get backup status and information." I've been using Dropbox since its first public (beta?) release on multiple different platforms, both supported and unsupported. I uninstalled the application three or four days ago when I found that background process lurking on my PC (in addition to the other background Dropbox processes which I did expect to see). If their application is turning into a web app, I can already use my main browser for that.
kwijibob 7y ago
I really hope this means they will add support for SmartSync on Linux. That is the one new killer feature. Paper and the rest are not interesting to me. Oh, and they need to turn on full text searching inside files for paid Dropbox Plus accounts. That is a ridiculous crippling.
jonotime 7y ago
Also too late here. As a big fan I was bummed to be forced to leave the free plan. This and the 3 device limit were a deal breaker. Now I'm onto syncthing and keybase FS.
rcarmo 7y ago
Seems to be working just fine on the eCryptFS setup I have on an older laptop (which I stopped using a few months back). All we need now are ARM versions of the client.

272 points by logix 7y ago

It was a stupid and arbitrary decision to begin with. Glad support is back but I don't think I'll be back.

Too late. I have left Dropbox because of their stance on Linux filesystems, price bump with unnecessary features, and the continuous badgering to upgrade to Dropbox business. It's great change though for those who are still on Dropbox. Their sync is top-notch.

duiker101 7y ago
What did you move to? I like Dropbox I just find it crazy that they (or no other company AFAIK) allows me to sync folders on my SD-card on my Android phone.
- jumbopapa 7y ago
  I would recommend looking into Nextcloud.
  - fock 7y ago
    though nextcloud definitely is a lot more than: "a folder to sync your files". but hey, apparently even VC in search of growth sometimes notices that their path is not the best.
  - duiker101 7y ago
    I did, I found it too clunky for my taste unfortunately
  - pizza234 7y ago
    I used Nextcloud/Owncloud in the past, but it's a mediocre product from an engineering perspective. I've found several bugs, the most ridiculous of which was to get a conflict on a file... while using only one client.
- danieldk 7y ago
  Resilio Sync for file sync, with a local NAS and a Hetzner VPN as read-only encrypted peers. SmugMug for sharing photos with family.
- tdurden 7y ago
  Resilio Sync [1] 1. https://www.resilio.com/individuals-sync/ https://www.resilio.com/individuals-sync/
- pritambaral 7y ago
  Not parent, but I'm looking into Syncthing (https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing & https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net) and they document the issue and known workarounds to sharing from external SD-cards on Android: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android/wiki/Frequent...
  - lscotte 7y ago
    syncthing is a great choice, I've been happily using it for 2 or 3 years across Linux, Android, and Windows. I've never had to do anything special to use an SD card on Android.
    - pritambaral 7y ago
      > I've never had to do anything special to use an SD card on Android. It appears newer versions of Android do not provide a way for apps to access _external_ storage using ordinary POSIX APIs. SD cards can be used to back and provide "internal storage" on Android, and I don't think that is a problem (yet).
- opencl 7y ago
  Google basically made it impossible for file syncing software to work on SD cards in modern versions of Android (IIRC since Marshmallow or maybe Nougat) unless you use the 'SD as internal storage' option which many manufacturers have disabled entirely.
jcfrei 7y ago
> Their sync is top-notch. Which is exactly what prevented me from switching even though I run Linux. I've tried other file synchronization products and the speed was always significantly lower.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- josteink 7y ago
  Today I synced 29000 files (44gb) from home to work with Nextcloud in less than 30 minutes. I think that’s not only more than acceptable, but at least 10x the performance I’d get from Dropbox.
SomeHacker44 7y ago
Yep. I removed them from my life after the 3 device limit and will.nit fo back. I will give a few bucks to Apple, Google and Microsoft for their file services for a while as I decide which one I like best.
anxrn 7y ago
I'm also a Dropbox on Linux user, are there other cloud storage services with better Linux client support? I was considering Google Drive but it doesn't seem to support Linux at all.
- wh313 7y ago
  GVFS (https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/gvfs/backends https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/gvfs/backends) now provides a package that lets you log in to your Google Drive account and access it from Nautilus, but you have to be on GNOME for it.
  - xiaomai 7y ago
    This is very cool and I use it from time to time, but it's not actually keeping anything synced afaik (it's equivalent to the web ui, but very nicely integrated in gnome).
  - Arnavion 7y ago
    And KDE has kio-gdrive for the same thing with Dolphin.
- akvadrako 7y ago
  MEGA, Seafile, NextCloud, pcloud
- Barrin92 7y ago
  I'm using Google drive with insync which is really good but not free. https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse is also a good alternative if you're happy with mounting your google drive folder. Gnome now also has pretty well working support for this built in.
  - bad_user 7y ago
    Many people recommend Insync and while it may be good enough for people stuck with Google Drive on Linux, it doesn't match Dropbox's sync. In my experience with Insync it crashes a lot and it's very slow compared with Dropbox. And of course they have GDrive's limitations, for example the inability to do block-level sync. Recommending third party solutions is fine, but can you manage a 300 GB archive of files with them? And can you trust those solutions to not corrupt your data? I know I wouldn't because I have a hard time trusting the official clients of GDrive or OneDrive after noticing them actually corrupting my data, so no thanks.
fluidcruft 7y ago
Same. Inertia kept me with Dropbox all these years. It was easier to pay them than to figure out how to operate the alternatives. I'm not going to get those hours I spent migrating back--it's sunk cost now.
programmer_dude 7y ago
> Their sync is top-notch. Not really, occasional merge conflicts are par for the course with Dropbox. Never seen one after switching to Google drive with Insync. Dropbox is very inflexible, for example doesn't even let you choose your own folder name, doesn't work well when syncing across case-sensitive (Linux) and case-insensitive (Windows) file systems. It was a sucky experience overall. I am relieved I don't have to use it at work anymore.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  https://forums.insynchq.com/t/no-warning-when-file-conflicts-arise-danger/12559 https://forums.insynchq.com/t/no-warning-when-file-conflicts... ? Seems very dangerous for keeping data safe. And for what it's worth I've heard that google drive by itself often does the same thing.

a2tech 7y ago

After fighting with Box for a bit today I'm really happy that Dropbox still exists.

quantumsequoia 7y ago
What issues did you have with Box? I was considering trying them

tinyhouse 7y ago

That's good news. Happy to see Dropbox thinking about the people who stuck with them from day 1. In the past few years they have been all over the place, trying to find their next big thing and in the process also neglecting their non-enterprise customers. Their core product is still the best in the market and an important alternative to Google.

rch 7y ago
I feel the same way. Until recently they seemed to be deprioritizing features I cared about in favor of e.g. Paper, which seems designed for some other type of user. So, when my company was choosing a provider I didn't really have any compelling arguments I could make in favor of Dropbox. Maybe this signals that the tide has turned again.
- elcritch 7y ago
  Exactly, I've always preferred Dropbox because unlike Google Drive, Box, etc they handled files and handled them well. The aesthetics were clean and simple (the new site looks like someone killed an eggplant and based a website on it). But I've always wondered why they don't expand more on their storage basis for new features? Say email storage and backup (with say an optional web client interface) that supported regular email clients like Thunderbird/Outlook (ok, handwavy magic outlook support). Or a password service that sync'ed via Dropbox (1Passwd was great for a long time this way until I moved to a Linux desktop from a macbook). Their MS Office integrations are actually pretty great. Paper was cute at first, but doesn't build on their storage-first basis by storing say regular markdown files somewhere.
  - wasdfff 7y ago
    I still think the killer feature that will actually stratify these perfectly similar services will be seamless entire device sync. I have my files clumsily positioned behind my onedrive folder and use shortcuts, but macos insists on the default folder locations for some things. As clumsy as it is, its still great to be able to grab any devce in the world with an internet connection and access all my files in a few mins. Refining that would change the game for this type of service.

besulzbach 7y ago

> The reason cited for this was that "a supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync". Given that extended attributes are available in most of the filesystems used in Linux today, Dropbox still hasn't answered why they decided to go "ext4-only" for a while.

rhinoceraptor 7y ago
Probably since desktop Linux users are a tiny fraction of their user base, but create the most headaches and internet outrage.
- dev_dull 7y ago
  Relevant discussion: “Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets”[1] I feel like in open source this tends to work itself out with community patches, but with closed source it can become a real pain. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205
  - rsyring 7y ago
    I think what they may not consider is teams that have a small number of Linux users. In that case, Linux support could be required for the team to use Dropbox, even if the actual number of Linux devices is small. My point being that the 0.1% of sales might be true per device, but "supporting Linux" might actually bring more revenue than just the devices themselves would indicate because the whole team's revenue would be lost if they didn't support Linux.
    - gwbas1c 7y ago
      Doubtful. I work for a major Dropbox competitor and we don't have any Linux support. We aren't loosing any sales over Linux, nor are we under any pressure for Linux support. Typically Linux support in products like this is organic: It happens when the engineers themselves use Linux and push upwards to support it. Anyway, with the amount of testing and verification we do on our product, desktop Linux is impractical. We try to verify on as many possible user configurations as possible. (Multiple Windows versions, 32-bit and 64-bit, Multiple Mac versions, remote desktop, ect). Linux is so heterogeneous that we could only really support it if it was a large customer where we targeted their typical configurations.

Causality1 7y ago

Why would users of those file systems trust Dropbox not to just remove support again?

akvadrako 7y ago
It would be a bit absurd to remove support in the near future. It would make them seem very flaky.
- esoterae 7y ago
  I'd say they got their money's worth the first time, what with the facially obvious false explanation

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ohthehugemanate 7y ago

Fuck em. I've learned my lesson and set up my own nextcloud instance. Couldn't be happier, definitely not going back!

velobro 7y ago
Likewise! Been running the snap version on a $5 DO droplet for half a year now and there's been nothing making me want to go back. Sure the UX can be improved a bit, but it's been rock solid so far and gets the job done.
- pnutjam 7y ago
  Check out the storage servers at time4vps. I have 1TB for about $15/quarter.
  - acdha 7y ago
    That’s about the same as Dropbox — do they offer versioning and minimum retention periods?
    - pnutjam 7y ago
      It's an OpenVZ virtualized VM. I can run whatever I want on it. I personally do my versioning on my master backup, which has btrfs. Then I ship a copy to the cloud, which is my machine at time4vps.
      - acdha 7y ago
        Yes, my point being that you are comparing a fully-managed service to something which requires you to perform regular operational work. Since the price is the same, that seems like you're effectively valuing your time as free while getting less protection.
        pnutjam 7y ago

arisAlexis 7y ago

OK now I can go back from MEGA

akvadrako 7y ago
Why is Dropbox better for you than MEGA?
- arisAlexis 7y ago
  it's only the paranoia in me of a New Zealand company founded by a guy much resembling John Mcafee in madness vs a publicly traded USA comp

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akeck 7y ago

Interesting. I absolutely love DB sync on Linux, but I cleared my data yesterday. I got tired of dealing with the ecryptfs situation and couldn't go all in on DB because of the 2TB cap. I ended up going with Amazon Drive plus ExpanDrive for now.

nottorp 7y ago

To compensate for supporting more filesystems on Linux, they are now switching to a file manager-like application instead of the unobtrusive just-sync current option: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/dropbox-silently-installs-new-file-manager-app-on-users-systems/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/dropbox-silently-ins... Luckily they haven't ported it to Linux yet :)

noja 7y ago
"Due to an error, some users were accidentally exposed to the new app for a short period of time."

klhugo 7y ago

Why not supporting EL7? Is it that demanding? I am running dropbox on a docker container full of hacks and tweaks...

post_break 7y ago

I wouldn't go back even if they brought back the public folder.

gapo 7y ago

Gambled away a lot of the good will they garnered over the course of years. I've moved away and doubt will be back.

andyburke 7y ago
Same. I moved when they wanted me to unencrypt my home directory on linux. I've had good luck with pCloud. In particular, I can exclude file patterns, which has done wonders for my typical workflow (storing lots of code).

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awill 7y ago

What a mess. Product mistakes like this generally show that the company is either desperate, or unaware of their customers. I use xfs on Arch, and dumped Dropbox for Google Drive (with Insync) the second they made this announcement. It would be a pain to migrate back, so I won't.

VeninVidiaVicii 7y ago
I use Arch too, with BTRFS, but made a mounted sparse file for Dropbox, which has been an utter nightmare setting up on all my computers. I'm tempted to just keep it in case they reverse course again.
josteink 7y ago
> What a mess. Product mistakes like this generally show that the company is either desperate, or unaware of their customers. They were very much aware of their customers. They just didn’t care. They intentionally decided to break working customer-setups, thinking it was somehow “ok” just because they got a heads-up warning. Completely disrespectful. I left for Nextcloud, and I’m not coming back.

Havoc 7y ago

Dropbox squandered all their initial goodwill & completely lost sight of what made them appealing in the first place. Plus both my logins seem to be broken now anyway - in different ways. One just straight up refuses my pass manager saved password, the other accepts it then wants a 2FA then proceeds to refuse the password that it initially accepted. I'll take somewhere else...

sushid 7y ago
That sounds like something is wrong with your password manager (as in _you_ didn't store your url or update your password correctly). If you're saying Dropbox's password store process has been compromised, this would be a big accusation to make with your single data point.

brightball 7y ago

I realize there’s a lot of speculation happening here, but as a long time (since beta) user who was not looking forward to moving because of the plummeting Linux support...Thank You.

mattbillenstein 7y ago

Syncthing is open source and works great - windows, osx, linux, etc...

josteink 7y ago
But not iOS. So for me that means Nextcloud. And that works pretty great too!
- ahnick 7y ago
  I can't tell you how much it pains me that syncthing doesn't support iOS. I would donate money to a project that added iOS syncthing support.
  - mattbillenstein 7y ago
    I've used ios fsync() for some time.
- mattbillenstein 7y ago
  I've used ios fsync() for some time.
  - josteink 7y ago
    Doesn't show up in the iStore for me.

cocoa19 7y ago

Too late. I already moved to a different service and it was a pain. The only thing that might bring me back is Zero knowledge privacy. There are smaller competitors that have this as a value add, but I'd trust Dropbox more, since Dropbox is a household name.

cocoa19 7y ago
In case you're wondering what I mean: "In the context of distributed computer systems, popularly referred to as Cloud-based computing environments, zero knowledge privacy refers to client-server relationships where a server or service is incapable of viewing a client's plain-text data." - cybersecurityforum.com
brokenmachine 7y ago
Which Dropbox competitors are zero knowledge?
- ace_of_spades 7y ago
  Spideroak one. Use them for quite some time... never had any real trouble but I use it more as a backup service tbh. Customer support is pretty good though!
  - ace_of_spades 7y ago
    Why would someone downvote this comment? If you don’t like spideroak [1] that’s fine but downvoting for an informative comment seems childish. 1: https://spideroak.com/ https://spideroak.com/ Another e2e encrypted storage solution is keybase.io.
jorangreef 7y ago
Zero knowledge privacy requires a trusted third-party to act as escrow, i.e. to write and distribute the software. Without that, you have no guarantee that the zero knowledge crypto cannot simply be reverted.
shrimp_emoji 7y ago

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JshWright 7y ago

Meh, I've already moved on to other tools.

tombert 7y ago

Can someone explain to me why the choice of filesystem mattered? I would have thought that Dropbox could exist entirely in userspace with FUSE and wouldn't need anything as low-level as direct filesystem stuff. (I'm speaking out of ignorance both on how Dropbox and filesystems work).

patmcguire 7y ago
This is a very thorough explanation of why it matters https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/ https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/
- tombert 7y ago
  Ah, this was a good read. Always eye-opening to see how ignorant I am to a lot of stuff in comp-sci :). Thanks!
jlgaddis 7y ago
xattrs was their reason, IIRC (even though other filesystems also support xattrs). ETA: > A supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync. We will keep supporting only the most common file systems that support X-attrs, so we can ensure stability and a consistent experience. [0] [0]: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Error-messages/Dropbox-client-warns-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/m-p/290065/highlight/true#M18382 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Error-messages/Dropbox-clien...

tripzilch 7y ago

A few weeks ago I was setting up my new laptop, and I found out that my (free) Dropbox account had gotten downgraded to only be able to sync between 3 devices ... ?! I have no idea how long they've had this rule, but I'm absolutely certain that I used to sync between more than 3 devices at some time. I mean, it's kind of Dropbox's thing to be able to do that. Three is also the absolute minimum to make Dropbox Dropbox. If it was two, it'd be a file transfer protocol between two machines. If it was one, it'd be storage. Sure I'm not a paying customer so I guess they can technically do this ... But to silently downgrade a user's account to what basically amounts to the minimal setting to demo the service, nah that's just shitty. It's just squeezing out my free account to convince me to convert to a paid account. Which I guess is their right, but the proper decent way to go about that is to make the paid option that much more desirable that you want to convert, not to squeeze out the features of the free users. Anyone know when this changed? (It could be years, I don't install Dropbox that often)

tomku 7y ago
Middle of March of this year: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265574/dropbox-3-device-limit-free-accounts-plus-professional https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265574/dropbox-3-device...
writepub 7y ago
DISCLAIMER: No association with Dropbox. There's no real justification for outrage over a free product/service. They've paid your cloud storage and associated compute bills, and continue to pay for it, for whatever your usage is - effectively paying you - which should be incentive enough. VC funded startups have (wrongfully) conditioned users into expecting the moon for $0. Just flipping the tables a bit - if you ever build your own product/service, wouldn't you want payment for the value it offers to customers?

ComputerGuru 7y ago

And now Dropbox runs a background web server so they can serve their web-based UI, at least on Windows. I can’t believe how none of these huge companies that burn through cash like there is no tomorrow can’t afford to pay an intern to write an easy-to-maintain native UI for these simple “dashboard” applications. Ugh.

Arbalest 7y ago
What makes you think an intern would be able to do this? A few of them might, but I imagine most wouldn't. Being able to make something easy to maintain means knowing what is difficult to maintain. Except for the sharpest, who actively learn from others, the best teacher is experience.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  I fully intended that as hyperbole, but the idea was "use ready-to-use native widgets/controls to represent options/state" with as little "custom" UX as possible. The user-visible Dropbox UI is nothing more than a preferences dialog, the real "app" can be written by experts with 30 years of service and systems software expertise under their belts: it runs as an invisible background service using APIs for which well-supported cross-platform abstractions are readily available for all non-interpreted (and most interpreted) languages (inotify, channels, network io, encryption, compression, database serialization, etc). The preferences and configuration panel is not what anyone thinks of when you say "Dropbox" and does not need to be "let's use css/html to create a custom UI that does not conform to the system ux guidelines so we can shove our branding down users' throats," in turn necessitating "now we need to use a full-blown browser engine to render the UI and an always-running standalone web server to interface with the background service to get backup status and information." I've been using Dropbox since its first public (beta?) release on multiple different platforms, both supported and unsupported. I uninstalled the application three or four days ago when I found that background process lurking on my PC (in addition to the other background Dropbox processes which I did expect to see). If their application is turning into a web app, I can already use my main browser for that.

kwijibob 7y ago

I really hope this means they will add support for SmartSync on Linux. That is the one new killer feature. Paper and the rest are not interesting to me. Oh, and they need to turn on full text searching inside files for paid Dropbox Plus accounts. That is a ridiculous crippling.

jonotime 7y ago

Also too late here. As a big fan I was bummed to be forced to leave the free plan. This and the 3 device limit were a deal breaker. Now I'm onto syncthing and keybase FS.

rcarmo 7y ago

Seems to be working just fine on the eCryptFS setup I have on an older laptop (which I stopped using a few months back). All we need now are ARM versions of the client.