Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by _bxg1 2897 days ago
Google Drive is like "I guess you can use the desktop client instead of the web one". One Drive is like "I guess you can use a Mac". iCloud is like "I guess you can have non-Apple devices". Dropbox just syncs your files from and to anything you have, equally well. I'm pretty sure none of the others even have a Linux client at all, but Dropbox does.
5 comments

Yeah, this is really it. Dropbox just let's you use it they way you want, because they have no larger agenda than letting you share your files with yourself.
For Google Drive, even if not an official client I find that Gnome's Nautilus integration works extremely well and without friction (it's treated like an external storage) for the random file I could need to share with another device...
Except smart sync only works on mac and windows. Linux is a second class citizen.

I’d sign up for Dropbox if they had feature parity on Linux.

Also a plan in the $5 range would be greatly preferred. My threshold for moderately helpful services is usually $5/Mo.

> Also a plan in the $5 range would be greatly preferred. My threshold for moderately helpful services is usually $5/Mo.

Very much this. I was using Dropbox, and the 2 gig free plan wasn't enough, but I sure as hell didn't need a whopping 1 TB, so I switched to Google Drive. The 15 gig free plan is enough for me, and I can rest easy knowing that if I end up needing only a little more, I can get 100 gig for $2.

That said, I definitely preferred Dropbox's client more. Google Drive for some reason is frequently showing an X on it's sync folder indicating it isn't syncing even though it's working fine. Google Drive's client also seems to be really slow to start.

I'm not sure what you mean by "smart sync", but selective sync does work on Linux last I checked (a few months ago)
https://www.dropbox.com/smartsync

No, it’s not the same thing and no, it does not work on Linux.

I believe Linux also has a headless/command-line-only client, which is pretty freakin sweet
Along with that, there seem to be more useful integrations with dropbox, than with other services.
Well said.