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Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

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71–80 of 204 posts

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#71
post #69

I am extremely happy that my institution has it's own cloud storage and uses ownCloud. I have never had to deal with Dropbox, OneDrive or gDrive bullshit.

I used ownCloud for like a month before giving up and moving to Google Drive. It was so slow and clumsy.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Age neo-hypertext document type (proprietary, of course) that supports collaboration using the Dropbox™ suite of services

So a competitor to google docs / office?

It sounds a bit like Hypercard. If MS made a wordpad powerpoint hypercard?

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox always feels like it peaked early and has steadily gotten worse as they try to add more and more features to it. > I feel like they are missing the mark when it comes to marketing to consumers here. I get the impression they're relying on name recognition and first mover advantage to keep the simple users flowing in, while all of the extra features and GUI fluff are built out to attract some other audience th…

In my impression, they are removing useful features and adding unnecessary ones. Since I joined over a decade ago, they have removed an extremely useful Public folder with the capability to generate direct links, limited the number of devices, and added a ton of features I never wanted from them, like Paper.

Yeah agree, public folders were great. I’m still a user of dropbox since early days but:

- I’m stupid and I kept a git repo in there, it became corrupt. Doesn’t surprise me but wondering what else is fragile in dropbox.

- Uploading pictures on mobile is really really slow. For some reason google photos on iOS is so much faster, like incomparably faster.

- Google photos also allows you to quickly get to all your pictures. Dropbox is… at best cumbersome, at worst really slow at fetching lots of pictures.

- make public folders a thing again for paying users. I’m sure this would create an awesome ecosystem of websites.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's rows upon rows of features to compare across versions After you grow as a company and hire lots of engineers and your core product is "good enough", you have to try to pivot/stay relevant/compete/innovate I guess. Lots of manpower (I have no idea how large their engineering team is) need to be kept busy I guess?

They have 2500 employees. Why does a single product company with a product that is mostly “done” need those many people?

I would guess security is a huge part of dropbox and you’re never “done” there. The first dropbox-like that gets breached can say good bye to their spot on the market.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#75

I joined Dropbox in around 2010 and used it religiously through University to ensure all my work was being backed up as I worked on assignments. I used it for group projects and it was fantastic, at the time it was the most reliable cloud storage and I tried Microsoft Live Mesh, Live drive etc and found they were unreliable in syncing changes to edited files. Dropbox was flawless. I then shifted into using it to also…

It really bothers me how hard it is to download all your photos

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#76
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my impression, they are removing useful features and adding unnecessary ones. Since I joined over a decade ago, they have removed an extremely useful Public folder with the capability to generate direct links, limited the number of devices, and added a ton of features I never wanted from them, like Paper.

Yeah agree, public folders were great. I’m still a user of dropbox since early days but: - I’m stupid and I kept a git repo in there, it became corrupt. Doesn’t surprise me but wondering what else is fragile in dropbox. - Uploading pictures on mobile is really really slow. For some reason google photos on iOS is so much faster, like incomparably faster. - Google photos also allows you to quickly get to all your pictu…

I think that they removed public folders because some people started storing static files for their websites in it. As for why google photos are faster... I think it is because Photos resize images on device, while Dropbox uploads them in original size.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#77

Would be cool to get around a limitation of Dropbox's native client: filenames with emojis (and other utf8 I assume) won't upload. If their filesystem doesn't like utf8, maybe the client could convert the offending filenames to base64 or punycode, and convert filenames back from the cloud... maybe I can find a place in the code to try this out, thanks for open sourcing. I notice you're using type hints in python and…

what kind of psychopath puts emojis in filenames??

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#78

I joined Dropbox in around 2010 and used it religiously through University to ensure all my work was being backed up as I worked on assignments. I used it for group projects and it was fantastic, at the time it was the most reliable cloud storage and I tried Microsoft Live Mesh, Live drive etc and found they were unreliable in syncing changes to edited files. Dropbox was flawless. I then shifted into using it to also…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Google Photos stores pictures in original size anymore.

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#79
post #7

I was a very early Dropbox adopter but eventually switched to OneDrive a few years back because they bundled Office 365 with 1 TB of storage. I just went and looked at the official Dropbox plans to see if there was a family plan similar to the 5 users I get with Office 365/OneDrive...and found their plan/pricing page overwhelming. There's rows upon rows of features to compare across versions like "Traffic and Insight…

Dropbox still has the best syncing tech [1][2] which handles complex situations with lots of files and responds instantly. That alone is worth it if you need it.

However the rest of the product is crap. Dropbox had a solid business with a "magic folder that syncs" but has been chasing new features and product lines with little success. Even the enterprise offering was far behind Box.com for years and now has tons of competition.

1. https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-o... 2. https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure

Re: Open-source Dropbox client, with multi-account, no-device-limit and M1 support

#80
post #69

I am extremely happy that my institution has it's own cloud storage and uses ownCloud. I have never had to deal with Dropbox, OneDrive or gDrive bullshit.

I'm fairly happy of the OwnCloud/NextCloud alternative, but they're not very well-engineered products (although they got better over the last years). Definitely much better than Dropbox on Linux though, which is clearly a third-class citizen for the Dropbox company.

The NC client (and I assume also OC) can still generate conflicts even on a single machine, when the network/server connection is not stable. I also remember the Nginx default settings for OwnCloud being suboptimal.

Long ago, the NC/OC client was slow to sync, but now it's snappy.

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