Dropbox Dropping Support For All Linux File Systems

This article was posted on Slashdot web site by BeauHD on August 10, 2018 from the public-service-announcement department.

Dropbox Is Dropping Support For All Linux File Systems
Except Unencrypted Ext4 (dropboxforum.com)

New submitter rokahasch writes: Starting on August 10, most users of the Dropbox desktop app on Linux have been receiving notifications that their Dropbox will stop syncing starting November.

Over at the Dropbox forums, Dropbox have declared that the only Linux filesystem supported for storage of the Dropbox sync folder starting November 7 will be on a clean ext4 file system. This basically means Dropbox drops Linux support completely, as almost all Linux distributions have other file systems as their standard installation defaults nowadays – not to mention encryption running on top of even an ext4 file system, which won’t qualify as a clean ext4 file system for Dropbox (such as ecryptfs which is the default in, for example, Ubuntu for encrypted home folders).

The thread is trending heavily on Dropbox’ forums with the forum’s most views since the thread started earlier today. The cries from a large amount of Linux users have so far remained unanswered from Dropbox, with most users finding the explanation given for this change unconvincing. The explanation given so far is that Dropbox requires a file system with support for Extended attributes/Xattrs. Extended attributes however are supported by all major Linux/Posix complaint file systems.

Dropbox has, up until today, supported Linux platforms since their services began back in 2007.

A number of users have taken to Twitter to protest the move. Twitter user troyvoy88 tweets: “Well, you just let the shitstorm loose @Dropbox dropping support for some linux FS like XFS and BTRFS. No way in hell im going to reformat my @fedora #development station and removing encryption no way!“

Another user by the name of daltux wrote: “It will be time to say goodbye then, @Dropbox. I won’t store any personal files on an unencrypted partition.”