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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

I beg to differ. My Dropbox subscription costs as much as 2 Starbucks coffees and gives me unlimited version and deletion history, plus Dropbox respects me enough to provide me with a Linux client.

Yes, I could move easily, but by supporting the company with monopolistic behavior, I may not have any options left.

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You can use Drive on Linux via InSync: https://www.insynchq.com/

Having to use an unsupported third party tool doesn't speak well to the product. That's just begging for headaches a few months down the road when Google changes on the backend and InSync deletes or duplicates everything. Not InSync's fault, they just have no means of making sure Google doesn't break their tool.

Yeah, that is true. But I use Insyc on Windows because it is much more stable than the default drive app and supports symbolic links. So it isn't so much that Linux support is bad as it is that Drive support is bad.

Since Google internally uses Linux on desktop extensively, Linux Drive client is going to be released soon — they need it themselves.

They have an internal Linux client.

Which makes me unsure we will ever see one released externally, it must be the support cost that holds them back. Internally, they only have to support one distribution (their own) and some very smart users.

AFAICT Google internal Linux is pretty much a customized Ubuntu. If a Linux desktop client has a target market, users of Ubuntu + other Debian flavors represent most of it.

Not to mention your files are not stored exclusively online as with Google's Drive. Unless, of course, you're willing to jump through a few hoops in Google's case.

Furthermore, I get the impression there's an increasing fear of becoming a false positive on Google, therefore losing all of your data somewhere in the cracks of the Goog, with basically zero recourse.

'Dropbox' and 'respect' in the same sentence - funny.

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