Why we are leaving Dropbox • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#81

Post by ejdyksen » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:48 PM UTC

lazerwalker wrote: post #77

I've moved away from Dropbox purely because the desktop (OS X) app has gotten so terrible. Besides the lack of responsiveness mentioned in the article, Dropbox routinely takes up > 90% of my CPU resources while running. If I'm working at a coffee shop without power, having Dropbox running literally halves my battery life. This is new as of the last six months, and happens consistently across multiple Macs. I've asked…

In my experience, Dropbox responds to all file system I/O, even those outside of the Dropbox folders, strangely.

If I'm running, say, npm install or bundle install or installing Xcode (or doing anything else I/O heavy), Dropbox starts using a bunch of CPU, proportional to the amount of I/O going on at the time. Note that none of these operations are inside my Dropbox folder.

I do believe the FSEvents infrastructure allows you to just watch an individual folder [1], so it shouldn't have to be this way...

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin...

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#82

Post by vetinari » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:51 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #73

vetinari wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are using IPSEC VPN for external access. It works with standard clients in Windows, OSX, Linux, Android, iOS, whatever. It allows not only access to files on NAS, but also to webapps on another box and remote desktop on yet another box. Though I'm thinking about how to configure haproxy to allow Remote Desktop Gateway and https on the single IP, that we have.

Having to manage VPN accounts for everybody I want to share a folder with sounds like a huge pain. Especially if I have to go ask the VPN admin each time. And I'm still curious how you do offline access and syncing to local disk.

There is no offline access or syncing.

The data is available over gigabit link. It is local, after all. No need to sync to hide the latency.

And after all, there is more data on NAS, that the drive on my notebook can handle. No need to have it all locally.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#83

Post by vetinari » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:53 PM UTC

slantyyz wrote: post #68

vetinari wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ransomware attacks were on Synology boxes that had their web console exposed to the web. Nothing to worry about when using VPN.

>> Nothing to worry about when using VPN. If you are a services/consulting company and do client work on-site, you often have to sign an agreement from the IT department that prevents you from using a VPN on the client's network. In those cases, your remote workers need web access to files.

Well, that didn't happen to us.

We have access either to completely separated guest network, where we have to use VPN to both our network and customer network, or access via Citrix or Remote Desktop, where to exchange the files we have to use the built-in file share facility.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#84

Post by moey » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:53 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #43

vetinari wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the real server run? I haven't found anything, that Dropbox does that the NAS doesn't. Maybe there is some marginal function, I don't know. But is that hypothetical marginal function worth the 900% price premium (per year) plus reduced privacy?

How do you do offline syncing and sharing of folders with people outside of your network? Having to manage a bunch of VPN accounts for outside users seems like a major pain and getting them all set up with OpenVPN seems like an even bigger pain.

On windows, one can use this:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/working-with-netw...

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#85

Post by xtrumanx » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:54 PM UTC

Maybe its because I'm not a Dropbox user (or a cloud storage user for that matter) that what I found most interesting was that Google tried calling someone up for a support ticket on Google Drive.

Google doing actual customer support? I thought the internet said that never happened.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#86

Post by vetinari » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:56 PM UTC

zurn wrote: post #80

vetinari wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only devices with services exposed to Internet were hacked. Devices inside LAN, with external access provided by VPN, were not hacked. This applies to any service or device that you run. NAS is no exception. Your printer could be hacked, if you exposed it to the Net. Data can be accidentaly deleted anywhere, cloud providers or your own storage. You must make backups anyway.

No, that's 90s thinking. Current methods don't require the boxes/services to be directly internet-addressable. An exception is when you have a completely isolated LAN that's not serving internet-connected computers. But that's pretty spartan.

The infections needed to have access to web console (in Synology case, that's port 5000).

Unless you are targeted, that's very difficult to achieve even in slightly secured networks (i.e. every possible toggle in settings is not ON).

When you are targeted, it does not matter, whether you use Synology or Dropbox, the approach is tailored to your situation.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#87

Post by johnchristopher » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

> If you have to execute bulk operations, your only option is to first sync everything to a local machine, then move stuff around there (or delete it) and wait for the low performance desktop client to shovel everything back up upstream.

> It’s such a flawed design.

> One major advantage of cloud storage and selective sync is that I conveniently want to be able to re-organise files and folders through my Browser, without actually being forced to download everything first.

Hmm. The way I see it the Web UI is a bonus and a fall back when you are not near the computer where it's much easier to move files and folders around. Dropbox was sold and still sell as `files on your devices synced everywhere´ not `central mainline repo that downloads to your devices´.

I am old school, I still think that file management in the browser doesn't work well.

But I agree the desktop client (win and mac) got slower and slower (UI wise). My debian installation runs a previous version that is much faster.

I am glad they aren't packing it with new features that would disturb the dropbox mental model every layman has.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#88

Post by Synergyse » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 4:06 PM UTC

The Google Drive sync client had a major problem in that it used all your bandwidth when doing large syncs, they finally fixed that problem by introducing bandwidth settings. It is much more reliable now. https://www.synergyse.com/blog/prevent-google-drive-for-mac-...

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#89

Post by wordbank » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 4:06 PM UTC

lazerwalker wrote: post #77

I've moved away from Dropbox purely because the desktop (OS X) app has gotten so terrible. Besides the lack of responsiveness mentioned in the article, Dropbox routinely takes up > 90% of my CPU resources while running. If I'm working at a coffee shop without power, having Dropbox running literally halves my battery life. This is new as of the last six months, and happens consistently across multiple Macs. I've asked…

Oh yes, I wrote to their support and forums many times but it was futile.

I'm using Mac Mini with HDD and Dropbox takes 90% of disk I/O when there are more than 20-30 files updating.

I used to keep my projects in Dropbox folder before but now it literally slows my work.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#90

Post by em3rgent0rdr » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 4:08 PM UTC

cefstat wrote: post #74

dheera wrote: post #32

I use Dropbox because they don't try to innovate on the UI side. I use it mainly to sync certain directories (like fonts, desktop backgrounds, themes, dotfiles, certain /etc files, code workspaces, and other configuration files) across my Linux machines. It's also a billion times more easy to use Dropbox with people from China than Google Drive because you can set up an EC2 server in Japan, install the command line v…

The reason I am not committing to Dropbox Pro is because I need to use such a service when I'm in China (and with people in China). Setting up an EC2 server, configuring apache or nginx, setting up some access control, etc., goes completely against the whole idea of Dropbox being simple. Also, it's one way, unless you go to extra lengths to setup some upload system. Of course if this is something you use several time…

ownCloud will work in china because you run it off your own server.