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Forum Discussion
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'm working around this for the moment by using a free account (2 measly GB) and using that on the Linux laptop. Then I share what I want on the latop using my main account. Horrible ! I also tried rclone, but it is no good if you are offline.
Mind you that the linux client does have the possibility to plainly exclude folders.
One could set up the dropbox storage in two area's : "online" and "offline", two "root" folders so to speak. Less clever than smartsync, but rather transparent.
Please add this feautre on linux...
@Dropbox
When will you finally get this done?
We are not asking for so much.
We want Smart Sync for the main distros of Linux!!
I pay for it. Please.
Agree. That's the only very useful feature to be added to the linux client...hopefully soon but three years have passed...don't hold your breath :)
Linux still waiting.
The smart sync feature is a desired feature for space restricted Linux systems. If there was a means to mount the online only dropbox folder for the linux user home directory by default that would also be desired with smart sync. Thanks
Smart Sync is a very useful feature, especially with larger drives with a lot of infrequently accessed files. The feature is available on Windows and macOS, but not on Linux.
Dropbox's Linux compatibility is one of the most important features IMHO and I feel that Linux users are a bit left behind. Why not spare us some technical love and give us some new features?
Dropbox Linux Client have a lot of small problems but, it's for another ticket. :)
Please add this feature to Linux. It's a big let down to be a paying customer of this service and not have this very useful feature.
I'd also love this feature. My primary OS is Linux.
But...as someone with a couple decades of development experience I can tell you that doing this properly is not simple. Claiming this is a "simple" request in your comments is not helpful. The file system APIs between Windows, Mac, and Linux are different. While there might be some code re-use, there's a lot that can't be.
They'll only do this if they determine there is enough demand to justify it. Upvote and give constructive comments instead of stuff like "C'mon Dropbox, this is easy". 😛
Also, they have a published API so if you have development experience you can also try your hand at writing this and you can discover that it's not easy. 🙂
stuckj Since posting the comment I learned that what I thought was smart sync was actually selective sync (which *is* simple and *is* available for Linux). The customer support person I originally asked this either did a very bad job at explaining to me what's what, or was as confused as I was. In any case, she was the main source of this confusion for me.
Anyway I'm also a programmer and I agree that smart sync isn't trivial to just port to Linux. It's still a letdown though, because I know it *is* possible and from the amount of people in this thread apparently there's demand.
