
Dropbox Brings Back Support for ZFS, XFS, Btrfs and eCryptFS on Linux - logix
https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/07/dropbox-brings-back-support-for-zfs-xfs.html
======
tinyhouse
That's good news. Happy to see Dropbox thinking about the people who stuck
with them from day 1. In the past few years they have been all over the place,
trying to find their next big thing and in the process also neglecting their
non-enterprise customers. Their core product is still the best in the market
and an important alternative to Google.

~~~
rch
I feel the same way.

Until recently they seemed to be deprioritizing features I cared about in
favor of e.g. Paper, which seems designed for some other type of user. So,
when my company was choosing a provider I didn't really have any compelling
arguments I could make in favor of Dropbox. Maybe this signals that the tide
has turned again.

~~~
elcritch
Exactly, I've always preferred Dropbox because unlike Google Drive, Box, etc
they handled files and handled them well. The aesthetics were clean and simple
(the new site looks like someone killed an eggplant and based a website on
it).

But I've always wondered why they don't expand more on their storage basis for
new features? Say email storage and backup (with say an optional web client
interface) that supported regular email clients like Thunderbird/Outlook (ok,
handwavy magic outlook support). Or a password service that sync'ed via
Dropbox (1Passwd was great for a long time this way until I moved to a Linux
desktop from a macbook). Their MS Office integrations are actually pretty
great. Paper was cute at first, but doesn't build on their storage-first basis
by storing say regular markdown files somewhere.

~~~
wasdfff
I still think the killer feature that will actually stratify these perfectly
similar services will be seamless entire device sync. I have my files clumsily
positioned behind my onedrive folder and use shortcuts, but macos insists on
the default folder locations for some things.

As clumsy as it is, its still great to be able to grab any devce in the world
with an internet connection and access all my files in a few mins. Refining
that would change the game for this type of service.

~~~
nickflood
Just in case you've not thought or knew about it, have you tried using folder
symlinks on macOS? Might be an answer to those situations where you have to
have files in a special folder or its subfolder, but unfortunately will
require setup on each device. On Windows there are different folder symlink
types available as well (an `mklink` command line program makes them), plus
the common things like documents and pictures are actually "collections" where
you can add several folders for the Explorer to combine when viewing these
collections

------
gapo
Gambled away a lot of the good will they garnered over the course of years.
I've moved away and doubt will be back.

~~~
andyburke
Same. I moved when they wanted me to unencrypt my home directory on linux.

I've had good luck with pCloud. In particular, I can exclude file patterns,
which has done wonders for my typical workflow (storing lots of code).

------
cocoa19
Too late. I already moved to a different service and it was a pain.

The only thing that might bring me back is Zero knowledge privacy. There are
smaller competitors that have this as a value add, but I'd trust Dropbox more,
since Dropbox is a household name.

~~~
brokenmachine
Which Dropbox competitors are zero knowledge?

~~~
ace_of_spades
Spideroak one. Use them for quite some time... never had any real trouble but
I use it more as a backup service tbh. Customer support is pretty good though!

~~~
ace_of_spades
Why would someone downvote this comment? If you don’t like spideroak [1]
that’s fine but downvoting for an informative comment seems childish.

1: [https://spideroak.com/](https://spideroak.com/)

Another e2e encrypted storage solution is keybase.io.

------
tripzilch
A few weeks ago I was setting up my new laptop, and I found out that my (free)
Dropbox account had gotten downgraded to only be able to sync between 3
devices ... ?!

I have no idea how long they've had this rule, but I'm absolutely certain that
I used to sync between more than 3 devices at some time.

I mean, it's kind of Dropbox's thing to be able to do that. Three is also the
absolute minimum to make Dropbox Dropbox. If it was two, it'd be a file
transfer protocol between two machines. If it was one, it'd be storage.

Sure I'm not a paying customer so I guess they can technically do this ... But
to silently downgrade a user's account to what basically amounts to the
minimal setting to demo the service, nah that's just shitty. It's just
squeezing out my free account to convince me to convert to a paid account.

Which I guess is their right, but the proper decent way to go about that is to
make the paid option that much more desirable that you want to convert, not to
squeeze out the features of the free users.

Anyone know when this changed? (It could be years, I don't install Dropbox
that often)

~~~
writepub
DISCLAIMER: No association with Dropbox.

There's no real justification for outrage over a free product/service. They've
paid your cloud storage and associated compute bills, and continue to pay for
it, for whatever your usage is - effectively paying you - which _should_ be
incentive enough.

VC funded startups have (wrongfully) conditioned users into expecting the moon
for $0.

Just flipping the tables a bit - if you ever build your own product/service,
wouldn't you want payment for the value it offers to customers?

------
ohthehugemanate
Fuck em. I've learned my lesson and set up my own nextcloud instance. Couldn't
be happier, definitely not going back!

~~~
velobro
Likewise! Been running the snap version on a $5 DO droplet for half a year now
and there's been nothing making me want to go back.

Sure the UX can be improved a bit, but it's been rock solid so far and gets
the job done.

~~~
pnutjam
Check out the storage servers at time4vps. I have 1TB for about $15/quarter.

~~~
acdha
That’s about the same as Dropbox — do they offer versioning and minimum
retention periods?

~~~
j1elo
It's literally half than Dropbox, which costs €10 per month (so €30 per
quarter) in its Plus variant. And that's if you pay per year; monthly payment
costs €12 per month.

~~~
acdha
Half as much for half as much storage unless there’s some pricing page
adjustments going on.

------
Havoc
Dropbox squandered all their initial goodwill & completely lost sight of what
made them appealing in the first place.

Plus both my logins seem to be broken now anyway - in different ways. One just
straight up refuses my pass manager saved password, the other accepts it then
wants a 2FA then proceeds to refuse the password that it initially accepted.

I'll take somewhere else...

~~~
sushid
That sounds like something is wrong with your password manager (as in _you_
didn't store your url or update your password correctly).

If you're saying Dropbox's password store process has been compromised, this
would be a big accusation to make with your single data point.

------
tombert
Can someone explain to me why the choice of filesystem mattered? I would have
thought that Dropbox could exist entirely in userspace with FUSE and wouldn't
need anything as low-level as direct filesystem stuff.

(I'm speaking out of ignorance both on how Dropbox and filesystems work).

~~~
patmcguire
This is a very thorough explanation of why it matters
[https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/](https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/)

~~~
tombert
Ah, this was a good read. Always eye-opening to see how ignorant I am to a lot
of stuff in comp-sci :).

Thanks!

------
besulzbach
> The reason cited for this was that "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".

Given that extended attributes are available in most of the filesystems used
in Linux today, Dropbox still hasn't answered why they decided to go
"ext4-only" for a while.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
Probably since desktop Linux users are a tiny fraction of their user base, but
create the most headaches and internet outrage.

~~~
dev_dull
Relevant discussion: “ _Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes
and tickets_ ”[1]

I feel like in open source this tends to work itself out with community
patches, but with closed source it can become a real pain.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205)

~~~
rsyring
I think what they may not consider is teams that have a small number of Linux
users. In that case, Linux support could be required for the team to use
Dropbox, even if the actual number of Linux devices is small.

My point being that the 0.1% of sales might be true per device, but
"supporting Linux" might actually bring more revenue than just the devices
themselves would indicate because the whole team's revenue would be lost if
they didn't support Linux.

~~~
gwbas1c
Doubtful. I work for a major Dropbox competitor and we don't have any Linux
support. We aren't loosing any sales over Linux, nor are we under any pressure
for Linux support.

Typically Linux support in products like this is organic: It happens when the
engineers themselves use Linux and push upwards to support it.

Anyway, with the amount of testing and verification we do on our product,
desktop Linux is impractical. We try to verify on as many possible user
configurations as possible. (Multiple Windows versions, 32-bit and 64-bit,
Multiple Mac versions, remote desktop, ect). Linux is so heterogeneous that we
could only really support it if it was a large customer where we targeted
their typical configurations.

~~~
hackmiester
> We aren't loosing any sales over Linux

How would you know if you were?

~~~
acdha
“We decided to go with <other vendor> because they have Linux support”

“The sales team says that's a requirement for the companies they're talking
to”

“Competitor X has Linux support and they're growing faster with no other
obvious explanation”

~~~
jeltz
Most customers never contact your sales team in the first place if they see
that you do not support their stuff.

~~~
acdha
This very much depends on the product but note that is exactly why I listed
other possibilities. If Linux support was a big opportunity they’d know —
maybe not precisely but enough to know it was hurting them.

I’ve been using Linux for around 25 years, some of that selling commercial
software and most buying. There’s a very noisy contingent of the community who
make a lot of noise but never actually buy anything. You’ll go broke chasing
their feature requests because there’s always one more thing before they can
switch.

------
jhack
It was a stupid and arbitrary decision to begin with. Glad support is back but
I don't think I'll be back.

------
danieldk
Too late. I have left Dropbox because of their stance on Linux filesystems,
price bump with unnecessary features, and the continuous badgering to upgrade
to Dropbox business.

It's great change though for those who are still on Dropbox. Their sync is
top-notch.

~~~
anxrn
I'm also a Dropbox on Linux user, are there other cloud storage services with
better Linux client support? I was considering Google Drive but it doesn't
seem to support Linux at all.

~~~
rsync
"are there other cloud storage services with better Linux client support?"

My habit, of course, is to gently remind the reader of the existence of
rsync.net[1][2][3] which, I hope, is the service that perfectly matches your
unix/linux use-cases.

But in this comment thread, and to my parent specifically: I am genuinely
curious - have you not ever heard of our service ? Very interested to learn
this ...

[1] [https://www.rsync.net/platform.html](https://www.rsync.net/platform.html)

[2]
[https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html](https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html)

[3]
[https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/unix.html](https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/unix.html)

~~~
anxrn
"have you not ever heard of our service?"

No I hadn't heard of rsync.net before. I even browsed a few 'listicles' and
didn't come across it. I admit even if I had, I'd tend to lean towards more
established clouds. But I'll certainly take a peek now since it seems to fit
my bill. Thanks for the reminder.

~~~
rsync
"I admit even if I had, I'd tend to lean towards more established clouds."

Early winter of this year will mark 18 years that we've been providing cloud
storage ... although it wasn't _called_ cloud storage until we created the
"rsync.net" corporate entity in 2005 ...

We'll be around if you decide to check us out :)

------
ComputerGuru
And now Dropbox runs a background web server so they can serve their web-based
UI, at least on Windows. I can’t believe how none of these huge companies that
burn through cash like there is no tomorrow can’t afford to pay an intern to
write an easy-to-maintain native UI for these simple “dashboard” applications.
Ugh.

~~~
Arbalest
What makes you think an intern would be able to do this? A few of them might,
but I imagine most wouldn't. Being able to make something easy to maintain
means knowing what is difficult to maintain. Except for the sharpest, who
actively learn from others, the best teacher is experience.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I fully intended that as hyperbole, but the idea was "use ready-to-use native
widgets/controls to represent options/state" with as little "custom" UX as
possible. The __user-visible __Dropbox UI is nothing more than a preferences
dialog, the real "app" can be written by experts with 30 years of service and
systems software expertise under their belts: it runs as an invisible
background service using APIs for which well-supported cross-platform
abstractions are readily available for all non-interpreted (and most
interpreted) languages (inotify, channels, network io, encryption,
compression, database serialization, etc).

The preferences and configuration panel is not what anyone thinks of when you
say "Dropbox" and does not need to be "let's use css/html to create a custom
UI that does not conform to the system ux guidelines so we can shove our
branding down users' throats," in turn necessitating "now we need to use a
full-blown browser engine to render the UI and an always-running standalone
web server to interface with the background service to get backup status and
information."

I've been using Dropbox since its first public (beta?) release on multiple
different platforms, both supported and unsupported. I uninstalled the
application three or four days ago when I found that background process
lurking on my PC (in addition to the other background Dropbox processes which
I _did_ expect to see). If their application is turning into a web app, I can
already use my main browser for that.

------
awill
What a mess. Product mistakes like this generally show that the company is
either desperate, or unaware of their customers. I use xfs on Arch, and dumped
Dropbox for Google Drive (with Insync) the second they made this announcement.
It would be a pain to migrate back, so I won't.

~~~
josteink
> What a mess. Product mistakes like this generally show that the company is
> either desperate, or unaware of their customers.

They were very much aware of their customers. They just didn’t care.

They intentionally decided to break working customer-setups, thinking it was
somehow “ok” just because they got a heads-up warning.

Completely disrespectful. I left for Nextcloud, and I’m not coming back.

------
a2tech
After fighting with Box for a bit today I'm really happy that Dropbox still
exists.

~~~
quantumsequoia
What issues did you have with Box? I was considering trying them

------
Causality1
Why would users of those file systems trust Dropbox not to just remove support
again?

~~~
akvadrako
It would be a bit absurd to remove support in the near future. It would make
them seem very flaky.

~~~
esoterae
I'd say they got their money's worth the first time, what with the facially
obvious false explanation

------
mattbillenstein
Syncthing is open source and works great - windows, osx, linux, etc...

~~~
josteink
But not iOS.

So for me that means Nextcloud. And that works pretty great too!

~~~
ahnick
I can't tell you how much it pains me that syncthing doesn't support iOS. I
would donate money to a project that added iOS syncthing support.

~~~
mattbillenstein
I've used ios fsync() for some time.

------
brightball
I realize there’s a lot of speculation happening here, but as a long time
(since beta) user who was not looking forward to moving because of the
plummeting Linux support...Thank You.

------
jonotime
Also too late here. As a big fan I was bummed to be forced to leave the free
plan. This and the 3 device limit were a deal breaker. Now I'm onto syncthing
and keybase FS.

------
nottorp
To compensate for supporting more filesystems on Linux, they are now switching
to a file manager-like application instead of the unobtrusive just-sync
current option:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/dropbox-silently-
ins...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/dropbox-silently-installs-new-
file-manager-app-on-users-systems/)

Luckily they haven't ported it to Linux yet :)

~~~
noja
"Due to an error, some users were accidentally exposed to the new app for a
short period of time."

------
akeck
Interesting. I absolutely love DB sync on Linux, but I cleared my data
yesterday. I got tired of dealing with the ecryptfs situation and couldn't go
all in on DB because of the 2TB cap. I ended up going with Amazon Drive plus
ExpanDrive for now.

------
kwijibob
I really hope this means they will add support for SmartSync on Linux.

That is the one new killer feature. Paper and the rest are not interesting to
me.

Oh, and they need to turn on full text searching inside files for paid Dropbox
Plus accounts. That is a ridiculous crippling.

------
post_break
I wouldn't go back even if they brought back the public folder.

------
rcarmo
Seems to be working just fine on the eCryptFS setup I have on an older laptop
(which I stopped using a few months back). All we need now are ARM versions of
the client.

------
klhugo
Why not supporting EL7? Is it that demanding? I am running dropbox on a docker
container full of hacks and tweaks...

------
JshWright
Meh, I've already moved on to other tools.

------
arisAlexis
OK now I can go back from MEGA

~~~
akvadrako
Why is Dropbox better for you than MEGA?

~~~
arisAlexis
it's only the paranoia in me of a New Zealand company founded by a guy much
resembling John Mcafee in madness vs a publicly traded USA comp

