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Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

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Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#71

Post by jhasse »

sp332 wrote: post #58
xigma wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what do you believe is "the most popular distro"? Professionally, I have never seen a BTRFS deployment, nor any of the distros commonly at the top of Distrowatch (Manjaro, Mint, Elementary...). With the fragmentation of Linux, even the "most popular" distro may hold a tiny market share. The guys at dropbox probably know far more about their users than what is reflected in some arbitrary popularity co…

Ubuntu uses ext4 and the default is to ecryptfs the user's homedir. Edit: Actually I can't find that it was ever the default , but it was a pretty prominent option so I assume this decision is going to mess with a ton of customers.

Encryption is opt-in, not the default.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#72

Post by raverbashing »

XorNot wrote: post #62
gnufied wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That statement is bit dubious. The next line also says: > 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. Certainly XFS supports xattr and hence ideally should be supported. I don't…

It's because Linux users know what they're getting and store more data then "regular" users. It's the same reason "unlimited" storage plans from Backblaze don't have a Linux client.

Then put a limit and don't claim unlimited

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#73

Post by bantunes »

byproxy wrote: post #56
pjc50 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern alternative is probably Syncthing. I intermittently maintain a list of these things at https://github.com/pjc50/pjc50.github.io/blob/master/secure-... ; none of them have ever been precisely what I wanted. The cheap alternative to Dropbox with Linux support you want was "Hubic" from OVH (edit: now discontinued)

How about Keybase? It has a pretty seamless files experience, I find. Open source, end-to-end encryption, Windows client, painless sync, free for 250GB...

Stores your private keys, though.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#74

Post by dekhn »

WorkLifeBalance wrote: post #9

No problem, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

I spent about a year of my life trying to get WebDavFS (backed by apache mod dav svn) working. I want that year back.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#76

Post by viraptor »

ofj28 wrote: post #43
geoah wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not as such users are just a vocal minority, and probably not enough to use as a consumer group.

Doesn’t mean the niche user base isn’t big enough to support a small scale operation Think nerd friendly and minimal, like NearlyFreeSpeech is to domain registrars

Those little already have syncthing for sync and borg/duplicity systems for backup. (With a backend of choice) Why would they use a service that locks then in to one provider?

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#77

Post by Alex3917 »

pjc50 wrote: post #49
api wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really sums up nerds' lack of comprehension of the importance of user experience. It's like the UX version of the apocryphal "640k is all anyone will ever need."

The other famous one of those is "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

The first iPod was terrible though and sold poorly. The 3G was the first good model, and they didn’t start taking off until the 4G. History only proves that his analysis was completely correct.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#78

Post by michaelcampbell »

rayiner wrote: post #46
montecarl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in case anyone doesn't recognize this quote, it is from the 2007 hacker news post about Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

It’s a really great example of worse is better.[1] We went from sophisticated network file system to a daemon that destroys your battery life (at least on Mac) watching for file changes in a directory. [1] https://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html

Your situation is different than mine; this is the first I've heard of Dropbox even registering as a top use of battery.

How many files do you have? I've got 26000 files in my Mac's dropbox folder. (Granted, very few of them change more than once or twice a day; maybe 20 or so of those do.)

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#79

Post by moogly »

Joke's on them because I already dropped Dropbox many moons ago due to poor performance and high price compared to the competition. Not to mention that they hadn't released a new feature in half a decade. I'm not sure they still have.

Also, I'm pretty sure Btrfs supports xattrs unless I'm missing something.

Re: Ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems

#80

Post by [deleted] »

wlesieutre wrote: post #24
thomasfedb wrote: post #10

The kicker is in the couching - dropping support for "uncommon filesystems" - of which their definition includes the default filesystem used by the most popular distro. Just dumb or wilfully ignorant?

I'd bet that by Dropbox's user metrics "the most popular distro" still qualifies as "uncommon" for a Dropbox client. Despite being the year of desktop Linux, non-server Linux boxes are comparatively rare. That said, Ext4 is still supported, just not with encryption.

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