# The current state of Dropbox support (circa July 2013)



## Miles (Jul 31, 2013)

Hi all,

I am wanting to switch my main work machine (ThinkPad T420) to FreeBSD (getting p***** off with Linux fragmentation), however, I do rely heavily on Dropbox. There are many threads on the web saying that Dropbox doesn't work for the most part. However, a lot of these threads/articles are a couple of years old. So, has anybody recently attempted to get Dropbox to work, maybe with the Linux compatibility layer or something?

If not, then any recommendations as to viable alternatives? Must however work with a Windows machine as well (use for games etc).

Best regards,
Jack


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## ratman (Aug 2, 2013)

Same case here. I'll let you know if I succeed.


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## ratman (Aug 3, 2013)

Nah, even if you download the source, it attempts to download binary code and says platform not supported. I tried via linuxulator and it died with a failed assertion on Pango. So I guess it's a fail for now. You could switch to Gentoo and set up your desktop environment just as you would in BSD.


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## vermaden (Aug 3, 2013)

VisionIncision said:
			
		

> Hi all,
> 
> I am wanting to switch my main work machine (ThinkPad T420) to FreeBSD (getting p***** off with Linux fragmentation), however, I do rely heavily on Dropbox. There are many threads on the web saying that Dropbox doesn't work for the most part. However, a lot of these threads/articles are a couple of years old. So, has anybody recently attempted to get Dropbox to work, maybe with the Linux compatibility layer or something?
> 
> ...



Dropbox still does not support FreeBSD, ask them to release the source or provide binary blob.

In the meantime you can set up a CentOS jail on FreeBSD and use Dropbox there: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Image/Linux/CentOS55


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## dazza (Aug 3, 2013)

I use BitTorrent Sync to sync data between my Mac, Windows and FreeBSD machines. Not compatible with DropBox but it might suit your needs.

http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html


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## cpm@ (Aug 5, 2013)

Check out the Dropbox-Uploader bash script which can be used to upload, download, delete, list files from Dropbox.


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## erictallman (Aug 31, 2013)

Linux uses inotify to monitor filesystem changes, FreeBSD uses kqueue, an alternative that apparently doesn't have the right capabilities in the current implementation. I think it has to do with available inodes getting exhausted.


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## BSDBernd (Feb 8, 2014)

I use the dropbox-api command, which works perfect. You can create your own Dropbox-folder on your system, sync it with the data in the cloud, create folders, list, upload, and download things, and whatever. There should be no problem to sync automatically just by using software that executes scripts on certain predefined time intervals.


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## BSDBernd (Feb 25, 2014)

Just out of curiosity, does anybody know why there is an official Dropbox client for Mac OSX although this OS is based on BSD? Is inotify really necessary?


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## kpa (Feb 25, 2014)

BSDBernd said:
			
		

> Just out of curiosity, does anybody know why there is an official Dropbox client for Mac OSX although this OS is based on BSD? Is inotify really necessary?



OS X is not really based on BSD, it's quite a different animal allthough it does have some code imported from FreeBSD.


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