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

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

#171

Post by infinitezest »

rbut wrote: post #114

If you're looking for an open-source self-hosted alternative to Dropbox, I've found Seafile to be flawless. Seadrive is also nice if you want to access your data as if it were a network drive. * Not affiliated with seafile, just really like their software. https://www.seafile.com/

I'm actually surprised to see this comment so far down on HN.

I switched after Dropbox started imposing a device limit. There was a but of a learning curve to get it all set up and the quality of the client software can be hit-or-miss. That said, the core functionality (syncing files between devices) has been rock solid.

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

#172

Post by _hyn3 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #24
sylens wrote: 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 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…

Just use syncthing. It's open source and works great.

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

#173

Post by djrogers »

eropple wrote: post #165
wiether wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm usually not a "you have to go the hard way before going the easy way"-guy, and I started the easy way actually, but using CLI every definitely changes the way you name your files. And I can't see (and don't want to) how you would manage files through CLI that contains emojis in their name...

It's distinctly not the easiest thing in the world, but on a Mac the emoji panel is "tap Fn" and on Windows it's Win-;. Also, tab completion.

The default keyboard shortcut for the emoji picker in macOS is Ctrl+Cmd+Space, Fn is not used…

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

#174

Post by michaelcampbell »

sylens wrote: 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…

Yeah, me too (early adopter, paid version). My breaking point was the Windows client kept dying, SILENTLY. When I used it for keeping data in sync with my wife on her Windows machine, this was a total deal breaker.

Using Syncthing now, and it's been solid.

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

#175

Post by gajjanag »

manigandham wrote: post #79
sylens wrote: 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…

Maybe Dropbox's is the best out of a bunch of mediocre syncing solutions. However, I do wish to add that Dropbox struggles with scale: lots of small files slow down sync to a crawl and spin CPU at 100%.

Concretely, I had a certain folder with 100,000+ small files for some research I was doing with a collaborator. It took my laptop 24 hours to sync this folder, and throughout my CPU was at 100% throughout. For comparison, rsync got the same job done in a few minutes. See https://help.dropbox.com/accounts-billing/space-storage/file... , the above terrible experience is in line with this caveat.

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

#177

Post by Macha »

gtirloni wrote: post #135
mastrsushi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That either reads “we don’t have the resources to support our second largest OS platform” or there are too little users still using the native desktop client. Mind you, this is a company that went out of their way to port a Linux client in 2011. To see them hesitate with m1 is shocking

I bet M1 users aren't nowhere near "the second largest OS platform". Unless you're bundling x86 macOS users together. Just pointing out that it's not as critical (yet) as it might appear.

I suspect even combined, macOS is fourth after Windows, Android and iOS.

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

#178

Post by [deleted] »

Macha wrote: post #162
manigandham wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Ultimately the comment was somewhat correct though. Dropbox's core product is a feature. It misidentified the competition as tech-savvy users, but ultimately it turned out to be MS/Apple/Google. And consequently when those competitors added that feature, Dropbox's growth has stalled and they've been flailing around to find a USP since. It was enough to get a decade of VC money and even start breaking even in 2020, bu…

[deleted]

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

#179

Post by jazzyjackson »

cerved wrote: post #77
jazzyjackson wrote: post #39

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??

lol

I use YouTube-dl on Reddit, so the headline becomes the file name. Lots of emojis in Reddit titles. On the “nature is fucking lit” subreddit, it seems to be a rule to start your title with a fire emoji.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/

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

#180

Post by manigandham »

tome wrote: post #88
sylens wrote: 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…

Does anyone understand how OneDrive and Dropbox can be so cheap compared to S3? - 2 TB on Dropbox is £7.99 / month - 1 TB OneDrive is £59.99 / year - 1 TB on S3 is $23.99 / month How can Dropbox and OneDrive be cheaper than S3 at all , let alone after providing value add on top? Is it something to do with lower reliability and availability guarantees? Is it possible to buy direct access to their underlying storage? h…

Those are retail rates, big users get much better pricing. Dropbox used S3 for years until finally moving to their own datacenter to be more efficient.

And like others have said, users are charged for storage that many don't use so there's a lot of revenue padding. Same model used by the other clouds for consumer storage like Google Drive.

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