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Comment by mattl | Hacker News Reader

Do you think you'll ever offer the $5 a month plan for desktop GNU/Linux users? I have an office full of Ubuntu users.

Hey Matt! Doubtful. For our consumer backup service allowing servers, NAS boxes, or Linux would skew our unlimited model in an unfavorable direction. We've been sending folks over to our Backblaze B2 service (it's still relatively inexpensive at $0.005/GB - so depending on the amount of data it might actually be less expensive). We have a lot of integrators, and one of them Duplicity ships with a lot of Linux boxes already (https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001518354). They don't have a GUI, but Deja Dup (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup) does offer one, though Backblaze B2 isn't integrated in to it yet - we're crossing our fingers. The are some GUI tools like Cloudberry, qBackup, and Duplicacy that do have GUIs you can use as well. I know it's not the same as an unlimited plan at a fixed cost, but it does offer a bit more flexibility for the end user.

I'm talking about just desktop users though. Nothing stopping someone plugging a 8TB drive into their Macintosh and using the service afterall...

Completely understand, and we do back up Drobos and external drive bays as well, but opening it up to NAS, Servers, and Linux would not work out well. That said we're constantly running modeling on it, but for now we send folks to Backblaze B2 and most folks tend to be pretty happy with it. Plus with B2 + Backblaze Groups you can centrally manage those backups as well, so you still get the web-usability of Backblaze, just need someone else' client to tie in to B2 (or roll your own w/ CLIs and APIs).

If you ever start offering regular backup for $5 for desktop, we'd love to be a customer.

Sure, but the % of users with 8TB drives—and the connectivity to push that in the first place—would be low enough to still work out favorably for them.

I understand why you don't support Linux. And while I wish you did, I respect the decision.

However, can you provide me with a backup client integrated with B2 that makes backups as simple as the regular home service? I don't want to deal with CLI or anything complicated.

Hey Zanedb! We don't have one of our roadmap, but we DO have a lot of B2 integrators that are actually quite simple to use, take a look at -> https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html (most of them are either free or are a one-time license cost + storage over time).

I run Linux on my laptop. That's not a server. Just provide a GUI application so no one in their right mind would put it on a server.

Any backup client has to be headless, otherwise it will fail to maintain your backups while you are logged out or automatically resume after a reboot. It's a non-starter.

My home directory is encrypted then anyway.

Why do you keep saying my home Linux laptops with 256 and 128GB are NASes? Why aren't Windows Servers some other people use with 12TB of storage marked that way?

I get that you don't want 150TB uploads, but why do you insult your potential customers by calling them hoarders just by the OS they use on their home devices?

2nd, I was about to upgrade my Crashplan service to multi user to add my Linux laptop. Now they're going away entirely so I'm back to square one.

3rd. Another Crashplan refugee. I loved using Backblaze when I was on a Windows & osx.

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