11mo ago

Suggestions for consumer cloud syncing on Linux?

I'm brand new to Linux, running Mint on an old laptop to get a few more years out of it. I can install things via CLI, but I prefer GUI if available.

I'm looking for a cloud syncing option for some files I want to access across multiple devices. I don't need a lot of space. I'm not skilled enough to host things somewhere myself, I want just a consumer cloud solution.

I have a Box account, but there's not a native Box sync app for Linux. I've seen ExpanDrive claims to offer Box syncing, but I'm hesitant to pay or give it access to my account without knowing more about it. If it truly works and is secure, I don't mind paying.

Otherwise, what have been your best experiences with cloud hosting and syncing on Linux?

Thanks everyone! I've been having a lot of fun with my little Linux machine, I'm just bummed I didn't try this sooner.

29 comments

Have you looked into SyncThing?
- +1 for Syncthing, I use it a lot. However anyone have any methods of 1-way sync? I'd like to backup camera photos from my phone with it but not have a 2-way sync so I can delete the pictures off my phone, and not have it deleted on my server. At one point I found a discussion with the developers about this exact use case and if I remember right, they were kind or in the camp of 'that use case extends beyond what we envision for the app and would introduce more complexities, so we're not a big fan of introducing that feature.'
  
  Syncthing can do one way sync
  
  it's not 2-way vs 1-way sync (also, ppl who replied didn't read your requirements lol), it's that you want to ignore deletes, which is not possible.
  
  I have multiple one way syncs set up, I've never had any issues.

Rclone. You can set it up to work with most/all commercial cloud storage providers. Basically a little bit of configuring in the terminal, and you get the storage mounted like a network drive. You can even add in a layer of encryption. For awhile I had my media server using google drive this way as storage for like 10TB of TV/movies!

Megasync , the app they have for Linux works great!

Other people have mentioned open source products so I’ll just add that Dropbox has a Linux client. I use Nextcloud for my own stuff but I have Dropbox for work stuff and it works basically the same as on Windows/Mac as far as I can tell.

hwittenborn/celeste: Celeste is a GUI file synchronization client that can connect to virtually any cloud provider.
Backed by rclone, giving you a reliable and battle-tested way to sync your files anywhere Written with GTK4 and Libadwaita, giving Celeste a native look and feel on your desktop Written in Rust, making Celeste blazingly fast to use
https://github.com/hwittenborn/celeste

Nextcloud is really great for this. There is clients for all desktop and mobile OS. I am hosting this myself on my VPS however you can however use this service here: https://nextcloud.com/sign-up/
their website says they host it for you and provides this list of providers....

pcloud
- Yep. Using pcloud on Fedora, works fine.

Have you checked https://github.com/box/boxcli ?
It's by the Box devs but unfortunately only cli.
- It looks like there's also a 3rd party FUSE driver for Box:
  https://github.com/drotiro/boxfs2
  OP, if you're not aware, FUSE is a type of filesystem driver. It lets you mount things just like an external drive.

https://rclone.org/box/

There's commercial nextcloud providers and dropbox has a linux app. You could also do something syncthing or sftp. Google drive can integrate faily well with gnome, idk about cinammon tho.

If all the devices are going to be on the same network most of the time you could go with Syncthing. It's pretty simple to set up syncing folders between multiple devices.

I use kDrive and it’s great on Ubuntu. A bit less on Fedora but it works well with iOS and Android too.

I use syncthing with my home server to synch about 11 devices. It's flawless.

Nextcloud as already mentioned.
I got a 1tb lifetime deal on internxt , but very basic options. ( Securitywise really good though) Syncthing to sync between units for small stuff.
Review https://www.cloudwards.net/review/internxt/

Others have brought up open source solutions already so on a different note I'll say I've used the (closed source and paid) Insync client successfully in the past, and it worked fine. An interesting bonus is you can have it on both Windows and Linux pointing to the same set of files if you dual boot and it's supposed to work just fine.

You can for example install nextcloud or seafile on a hosted vps at https://qlick.cloud

@HalfAHero Syncthing is pretty good solution

29 comments

hwittenborn/celeste: Celeste is a GUI file synchronization client that can connect to virtually any cloud provider.