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When will online-only files work on Linux?
I need to save space on my hard drive. Online-only files would be the perfect solution, but it still does not work on linux fedora.
When will we have this solution?
edugsdf wrote:
I need to save space on my hard drive. Smart Sync would be the perfect solution, but it still does not work on linux fedora.
When will we have this solution?
At the moment, Smart Sync is only available on Windows and Mac. Dropbox has made no announcement on its availability on Linux. They usually don't discuss timelines or upcoming features until they're reaady to announce them, so we likely won't know that it's coming until it's already here, assuming that it's coming at all.
I regret that I do not have an answer for workarounds for the lack of SmartSync in Dropbox. My own solution has been to add hard drive capacity to my Linux machines.
The SmartSync issue on Dropbox was raised at least as far back as 2018, and thus far the Dropbox team has failed to implement this feature in Linux. Although I have been "getting by" without SmartSync on my 6 Linux machines, I think it is shameful that Dropbox has not responded to this need for its Linux users.
If a company is going to offer commercial versions of a product for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows, it ought to provide the same functionaltity in all three versions. For example, I use a number of computational molecular modeling programs including BioSolveIT SeeSAR and Infinisee, CCDC suite, CCG MOE, ChemAxon suite, LigandScount, Molsoft ICM-Pro, OneAngstrom SAMSON, OpenEye suite, Schrodinger Suite, and YASARA-Structure. All of these programs have completely functional versions for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. I fail to see why Dropbox is unable and/or unwilling to make the Linux version of their product function at the same level as their Mac and Windows versions.
There is a Cloud Storage solution called Expandrive which IIRC takes a different approach to DB concerning file syncing.
What this solution does is to tokenise the files stored remotely on their servers so that all that is stored on your local drive are small tokens which relate to the full sized file, so effectively taking up very little space - certainly not the native file size to any extent. I'm not certain of the numbers but as an example, 4TB of data on the Expandrive servers would translate to a very small amount of data on the local HD.
I guess this could have its own problems. The advantage of DB is that the native file is available locally so it can be amended offline and will be synced later when te connection to DB is restored whereas the token which relates to the file cannot itself be used locally.
It's a matter of horses for courses I guess but perhaps the DB team could consider offering something on these lines for the Linux community if they are struggling with SmartSync.
