Yes, Proton Drive for Linux is currently not being actively worked on/update: they lack developers, see post
Update: i went to reddit because there was an AMA from proton . There, they said:
*The only reason why our Linux clients are lagging from a development is simply that it is extremely difficult to hire Linux Desktop developers.
Still reading all the replies, very greatful for the tips and responses, thank you all!
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Thought i would share this with you all:
I contacted Proton for a technical issue and decided to also ask about their plans for Drive for Linux.
Their response:
Proton Drive on Linux: Regarding the availability of a Proton Drive client for Linux, this is a common feature request that many users have expressed interest in. Our team is aware of the growing demand for a Linux client. While we currently do not have an ETA for when a Linux client might be available, we have not ruled out the possibility of working on it in the future.
I'm very disappointed, since i'm probably going to switch to Linux over the weekend.
Come on guys give them a break. You dont have to use their services if you dont want, but they do a variety of things and they do them well. You can still use Drive through a browser.
I've been testing out the rclone Proton Drive integration for a bit. As it is today, the rclone approach is currently too slow, especially using the "mount" approach which lets you access Drive files on-the-fly only downloading data as needed.
Using an "sync" approach (where data is stored both locally and in Drive) might be a better approach, unless you expect rapid syncing of files.
Considering the setup efforts, I cannot recommend Proton Drive for Linux in a productivity context.
Alternatives to Proton Drive on Linux there is @filen and Tresorit, which are both fully #e2ee. I've been using both for a while and both are decent.
Filen is the cheapest alternative and feature wise pretty close to Proton Drive - but they have a sync client for Linux. They do not have a possibility to access files "on-the-fly"; all data must be synced locally. And sharing data via URL need to happen via the web portal. Sharing data between Filen users was read-only access last time I checked.
Tresorit is fairly expensive, but also a lot more feature rich, especially on the sharing side. The Linux client supports both synchronising files between local storage and the cloud as well as a "drive mount" where all files in the cloud are available and only downloaded once you access it - or uploaded directly if you store something there.
Both Filen and Tresorit are fairly efficient in regards to uploading and downloading data via their sync clients. Using the web portal is slower, especially on larger files. This is naturally and not unexpected; the data is decrypted first on your device when the data has been downloaded from the cloud storage. Proton Drive is no different here.
Filen is a more properly open source based product. Tresorit is non-open source and built on top of Microsoft Azure services.
While i understand the sentiment, that would make things even more difficult to ever happen, because they would be lacking funds.
Yes, i feel proton is very pricey. However, they are a company i still really trust; they have the services that are very important for me; and i consider my being a paid consumer partly as a donation, to support and encourage them.
@_Atlas_)@lemmy.world @Papanca
To fork what? The Windows or macOS Proton Drive and create a Linux version?
I would expect GUI interface is the least of the problems; that's most likely Qt based across all platforms.
One step up in the difficulty level is to implement the file synchronisation right. This would most likely need to be based on macOS, as that has a file system which shares more features to most Linux file systems. However, Linux supports many file systems and there are lots of corner cases to watch out for here (extended attributes). A synchronisation should ideally also synchronise all the meta-data about files, to ensure this is restored correctly on a different host later on.
And the most difficult and most different aspect is the "access on-demand". Here files are only downloaded from Drive as they are accessed. It's like a remote file system mounted locally. From the user experience, it looks like an "external harddrive", but it accesses data stored remotely. There are many ways to do this; an own kernel module or FUSE are the most common ways. FUSE is "simplest" and quite common - but might not give the best performance in many cases. A dedicated kernel module is tricky to distribute as they are hard-bound to the running kernel version. When you multiply those efforts to the Linux distributions available and the various kernel versions each distribution ships - it gets hard to get right. DKMS based distribution is more likely the best approach, but even that has challenges (Secure Boot system requires setting up signing keys, etc).
The difficult part is most likely not the UI aspect, but the "low level" code actually doing the file synchronisation and remote file access. That is very different between each platform.
Notifications are still encrypted, so no issues there about privacy. Convenience? Sure thing. BTW, I really want a notification service away from Google.