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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

#221

Post by brazzy »

rogerbinns wrote: post #199
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?

What I am confused by is what they think will happen to revenue. Step 1: "You can now use dropbox in fewer scenarios than before" Step 2: ??? Step 3: More customers paying more money Dropbox is paid for and used in various places I work and personally because of the Linux support. (Their competitors ignore Linux for some reason.) In my case step 2 is going to be them losing at least $1,000 in annual revenue. And they…

Step 2: use the 20% developer manpower required to support filesystems used by 2% of the userbase to instead better support the other 98%.

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

#222

Post by Fnoord »

amyjess wrote: post #208
vetinari wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) you can sync with a device inside your LAN, even if you are outside, with global discovery (enabled by default). 2) you can run your own off-site instance, that can be hosted with your favourite cloud provider.

> you can run your own off-site instance, that can be hosted with your favourite cloud provider. How much would it cost to hire an admin to set up and maintain that instance? The whole point of Dropbox is that I don't have to do any work.

Organizations already have such an admin, and workers can sync whilst they're at work. Not very difficult to set up, and saves tons of costs (although a NAS is a small initial investment to make it doesn't require much maintenance).

Individuals don't, but most individuals have no clue about the repercussions of hosting their plaintext data on Dropbox in the USA. Its a ticking timebomb.

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

#223

Post by owaislone »

eloff wrote: post #214
rcarmo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home directory encryption via ecryptfs is now the default in most Ubuntu variants, and it would be insane not to attempt to support it. That said, given that my Dropbox subscription just renewed (and that Linux is pretty much the only reason I'm still using it, since there is no OneDrive client I can rely on), I am really sad this seems to be a future direction for Dropbox.

I get a terabyte free with onedrive, because of the office subscription. I wish I had a good way to utilize it on Linux.

Out of curiosity, what happens if you office subscription ends? Obviously you won't be able to sync but does onedrive have some sort of grace period to let you download your stuff and at what point would it go and completely delete your data?

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

#224

Post by gsich »

srslack wrote: post #36
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.

More seriously: Syncthing exists, and it is beautiful. I set my grandmother up with Synctrayzor and she doesn't know the difference between that and Dropbox. It is missing the ability to share things with a direct link, or share a repository or folder "easily" (read: in the same way it's done with Dropbox), but the trade off has been worth it for me.

The android app sucks. No proper SD card support last I checked.

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

#225

Post by vetinari »

amyjess wrote: post #208
vetinari wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) you can sync with a device inside your LAN, even if you are outside, with global discovery (enabled by default). 2) you can run your own off-site instance, that can be hosted with your favourite cloud provider.

> you can run your own off-site instance, that can be hosted with your favourite cloud provider. How much would it cost to hire an admin to set up and maintain that instance? The whole point of Dropbox is that I don't have to do any work.

There are many possibilities, as it is not a pre-packaged solution.

For example, if you have Synology or QNAP, there are packages to sync with cloud providers, like Backblaze B2, Amazon S3, Azure Cloud Storage, etc. So if one of your syncthing sync instances (which you can make with few clicks) is such a device, with few more clicks you can choose your cloud platform and backup to that.

Or you can be using something entirely different. That's the beauty, you can use whatever fits your needs and budget, you don't have to fit yourself to limitations of one or two pre-packaged solutions. You can do something entirely different, e.g. if someone from your family also has some NAS, you can backup to each others devices and not rely on third parties at all. The possibilities are limitless.

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

#227

Post by freehunter »

brazzy wrote: post #221
rogerbinns wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I am confused by is what they think will happen to revenue. Step 1: "You can now use dropbox in fewer scenarios than before" Step 2: ??? Step 3: More customers paying more money Dropbox is paid for and used in various places I work and personally because of the Linux support. (Their competitors ignore Linux for some reason.) In my case step 2 is going to be them losing at least $1,000 in annual revenue. And they…

Step 2: use the 20% developer manpower required to support filesystems used by 2% of the userbase to instead better support the other 98%.

Step 3: $13b company cries over $1000/yr loss of revenue.

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

#228

Post by x0054 »

I have been using Resilio Sync on Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android, and it works a charm for me. In case this turns out to be a problem for you, maybe give them a try. Never an issue on Linux with Resilio Sync. I run a copy on my VPS in the cloud for remote storage.

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

#230

Post by XorNot »

delfinom wrote: post #183
XorNot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those same Linux users know they can just download rclone which is the client that has support for backblaze ;)

On their business plan, which bills for every GB (at a very good rate) but is commercialized at presumably a sustainable value right out the gate.
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