4 ms·

What’s the best alternative to iCloud Drive for macOS? Dropbox is so heavy and uses system resources, I’d love a lightweight one that I can trust

by tikkun 3y ago

bayindirh 3y ago
New Dropbox is using Apple's file provider and using ~500 MB of RAM. 322 MB for the app itself, and 177MB for the file provider. If you want, there are tons of applications which can talk with Dropbox, with varying levels of capabilities.
- clnq 3y ago
  Hah, maybe this shows my age, but half a gig of ram for a file syncing service sounds like way too much. I just looked up the new MacBook Airs, and they only have 8 gig of sys memory. The Dropbox share then sounds like it's quite a lot for one service. Why is it so memory-intensive anyways?
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    177MB is acceptable for a file provider I think, but the other ~300 MB is too much for my taste, too. Dropbox is running on a custom Python interpreter with obfuscated/encrypted Python code since forever. This why it needs that much RAM. Yes, it's borderline Electron levels of resource waste, but that thing works, and I can't complain. While Apple can manage that 8GB of RAM relatively well, 16GB RAM is a must on any Mac which is used for serious work.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      > While Apple can manage that 8GB of RAM relatively well, 16GB RAM is a must on any Mac which is used for serious work. I think developers all using higher end hardware than the common base models is a big part of the reason bloat like this exists is a problem in the first place. You've got programmers with 128 GB of ram and 32 CPU cores writing application software for people with 8GB of ram. A few hundred megabytes is nothing to the developer, but substantial to the common user who is also trying to use the same machine for several other things simultaneously.
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        As a developer poisoned by Demoscene, I'm very aware of memory usage of the things I develop, but I'm aware that I'm in the minority here. Most developers and companies want to minimize development time and sweat. Instead, they want to push their MVP out of the door and iterate quickly. This results in tons of imported libraries for single functions, unoptimized code, cruft and bloat, which I really don't like. However, even if all the things are optimized reasonably well, my point stands, because running things add up. Currently, besides two browsers (Firefox and Safari), I have Microsoft Excel, Obsidian, Spotify, Terminal, Apple Mail, Dropbox, Nextcloud, TextExpander, Viscosity and Amphetamine open. Currently 13,43GB of RAM is used alongside ~700MB of swap. Most of this is consumed by my Firefox tabs and WindowServer on macOS.
herrherrmann 3y ago
I can recommend getting a Nextcloud instance on a third-party cloud provider (I’m using Hetzner) and using the Nextcloud apps. Fast and lightweight!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

What’s the best alternative to iCloud Drive for macOS? Dropbox is so heavy and uses system resources, I’d love a lightweight one that I can trust

by tikkun 3y ago

What’s the best alternative to iCloud Drive for macOS? Dropbox is so heavy and uses system resources, I’d love a lightweight one that I can trust

bayindirh 3y ago

New Dropbox is using Apple's file provider and using ~500 MB of RAM. 322 MB for the app itself, and 177MB for the file provider. If you want, there are tons of applications which can talk with Dropbox, with varying levels of capabilities.

clnq 3y ago
Hah, maybe this shows my age, but half a gig of ram for a file syncing service sounds like way too much. I just looked up the new MacBook Airs, and they only have 8 gig of sys memory. The Dropbox share then sounds like it's quite a lot for one service. Why is it so memory-intensive anyways?
- bayindirh 3y ago
  177MB is acceptable for a file provider I think, but the other ~300 MB is too much for my taste, too. Dropbox is running on a custom Python interpreter with obfuscated/encrypted Python code since forever. This why it needs that much RAM. Yes, it's borderline Electron levels of resource waste, but that thing works, and I can't complain. While Apple can manage that 8GB of RAM relatively well, 16GB RAM is a must on any Mac which is used for serious work.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > While Apple can manage that 8GB of RAM relatively well, 16GB RAM is a must on any Mac which is used for serious work. I think developers all using higher end hardware than the common base models is a big part of the reason bloat like this exists is a problem in the first place. You've got programmers with 128 GB of ram and 32 CPU cores writing application software for people with 8GB of ram. A few hundred megabytes is nothing to the developer, but substantial to the common user who is also trying to use the same machine for several other things simultaneously.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      As a developer poisoned by Demoscene, I'm very aware of memory usage of the things I develop, but I'm aware that I'm in the minority here. Most developers and companies want to minimize development time and sweat. Instead, they want to push their MVP out of the door and iterate quickly. This results in tons of imported libraries for single functions, unoptimized code, cruft and bloat, which I really don't like. However, even if all the things are optimized reasonably well, my point stands, because running things add up. Currently, besides two browsers (Firefox and Safari), I have Microsoft Excel, Obsidian, Spotify, Terminal, Apple Mail, Dropbox, Nextcloud, TextExpander, Viscosity and Amphetamine open. Currently 13,43GB of RAM is used alongside ~700MB of swap. Most of this is consumed by my Firefox tabs and WindowServer on macOS.

herrherrmann 3y ago

I can recommend getting a Nextcloud instance on a third-party cloud provider (I’m using Hetzner) and using the Nextcloud apps. Fast and lightweight!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]