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Forum Discussion
Where's the Linux preferences GUI? The CLI doesn't work.
The title says it all. While setting up a fresh laptop with EndeavourOS, I was able to load the UI from an older installation for a moment until it closed itself. This usually happens when the app is...
RyanFromDropbox
Dropbox Product Manager
Dropbox Product ManagerHi Flame Soulis,
I'm on the Product team at Dropbox -- thank you for reaching out!
We're in the process of rolling out changes to our Linux application, which include simplifying portions of the interface and migrating certain preference options (e.g., Selective Sync) over to a CLI-only interaction.
Right now, this is only rolled out to Beta users; and it looks like you're currently on a Beta build, which explains the recent change in your UI.
Given this change, I want to help troubleshoot the CLI issue you're having -- and make sure it's working as expected.
It looks like the dropbox command on your system might not be pointing to the expected Dropbox CLI tool at /usr/bin/dropbox. That could explain the behavior you're seeing.
Can you please try running the CLI directly like this: /usr/bin/dropbox help?
That should give you the correct help output -- let me know if that works!
Cheers,
Ryan
Good evening, Ryan!
The issue is that I didn't download or install the beta build on the Ubuntu laptop, so if this was for beta only, it appears to have somehow become part of the release.
Either way, here is the output of /usr/bin/dropbox help
Granted, this is on the EndeavourOS laptop I use, and not the Ubuntu laptop. The Arch setup bases the installation from the .dropbox-dist tarball archive for the releases, and copies it to /opt/dropbox. The dropbox binary is then linked to /usr/bin/dropbox.
The AUR noted it was based on 214. I manually updated it to 220.4.4126 with the same process, which produced the results above. The .dropbox-dist folder had writing permissions removed to prevent the automatic update to 221.3. If you feel this will hurt testing, let me know and I can let it perform the automatic updates.
Because I understand that Arch is not one of the supported distributions, I will be reviewing the Ubuntu 24.04 laptop once I get home and repeat for the sake of brevity, as that was set up from the DEB packages from the website. Despite that, it also updated itself to 221.3.
- Rich
Super User II
Despite that, it also updated itself to 221.3.
Do you have Early Releases enabled in your account settings?
Do you have Early Releases enabled in your account settings?
Absolutely nailed it! It was turned on, since I liked to check the next version out on Windows in the past. I had no idea it was an account setting.
- RyanFromDropbox
Hi Flame Soulis -- Thanks for providing this context!
Based on your response and screenshots, it looks like you're using a non-standard setup for Dropbox on Linux.
You're missing the wrapper (dropbox) that actually implements the command line interface. This is a separate package named nautilus-dropbox that you can get here: https://github.com/dropbox/nautilus-dropbox
As we roll out the simplified preferences experience on Linux, you'll need this to ensure the Dropbox CLI works as expected!
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.
Cheers,
Ryan
For me, having a solid native Linux client is one of the main reasons I use Dropbox over alternatives from Google and Microsoft.
The Linux client has always felt like an afterthought compared to the more feature-rich Windows and Mac versions, but that was acceptable because it still resembled the cleaner, more focused Dropbox experience from around 2010.
This new (still beta) change feels like you're degrading the Linux experience to little more than a headless CLI version, with only a minimal tray icon left as the sole GUI layer. At that point, there’s barely any distinction from cloud-agnostic CLI tools like `rclone`, and I seriously doubt you’ll retain many users after a downgrade like this.
The biggest UX downgrade, in my opinion, is managing Selective Sync. Commands like `dropbox exclude add foo bar` and `dropbox exclude remove baz qux` are clunky, and the double-negation logic of "exclude remove" is especially unintuitive.
This is honestly why I created my forum account to figure this out. The fact this is going to be the next version just... why? It really doesn't make sense to completely degrade the user experience, especially since the whole point of using Dropbox was to get away from doing CLI stuff, and as the family IT person, no one in my household is exactly cheerful about this change.
As much as I could work on writing my own sub-GUI system for managing things, it shouldn't be needed. If I'm not mistaken, DropBox is still using Qt... which works on all platforms, so why can't anyone just compile for that? What sucks more about this change is I'm locked in on an annual subscription, and I JUST had my renewal done last month. As Windows 10's EOL approaches, I've made the switch to Linux in preparation for this, along with all my tools, and Dropbox's downgrade is going to remain in my mind for a while.
