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.

So for anyone reading this, if you are based anywhere in the European timezone and willing to take up on the challenge, apply here: boards.eu.greenhouse.io/proton/jobs/4140067101*

Still reading all the replies, very greatful for the tips and responses, thank you all!

===

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.

_Atlas_,

How easy would it be in theory to just fork it on github and make Linux client?

dazo,

@_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.

miss_brainfart,
@miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml avatar

What’s more disappointing now than ever is that Protonmail for Android still depends on Play Services/FCM for push notifications.

Recent news should be their cue to do something about that, and if they don’t… Idk, sour taste and all that

alex_herrero,

Notifications are still encrypted, so no issues there about privacy. Convenience? Sure thing. BTW, I really want a notification service away from Google.

miss_brainfart,
@miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml avatar

Even if the contents aren’t sent over Google servers in the first place, there’s still information left about when the app receives a notifcation.

This kind of metadata is already quite useful for profiling purposes, since it creates a clear trail to follow.

alex_herrero,

Sure, and that’s why a new method is planned.

EmperorHenry,
@EmperorHenry@infosec.pub avatar

WINE

chrand,

Very disappointed as well, a Proton Drive for Linux is a must. Waiting this for years!

Papanca,

See the edit in my post, they finally revealed the reason

0421008445828ceb46f496700a5fa6,
0421008445828ceb46f496700a5fa6 avatar

Really just want automatic android sync for my photos

Papanca,

That just came out yesterday, they added it to Drive

talentedkiwi,

Check for updates as mine shows it can do that. Only on WiFi, but it’s a start.

Edit: Version 2.0.2 is what I have.

barcaxavi,

Thanks for this! When did it happened? I thought I paid attention to changelogs, but it turns out I’m not

talentedkiwi,

Yesterday! So very recent.

sasquash471,

Also a synology client is missing. They should just provide a public API. Then we could build the clients by ourself instead of waiting for years.

dazo,

@sasquash471 @Papanca How do you think the rclone protondrive support appeared?

https://rclone.org/protondrive/#limitations

Lexam,

Well pitter patter.

Krafting,
@Krafting@lemmy.world avatar

When it’s.like this, I don’t use or pay for their services.

Papanca,

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.

LunchEnjoyer,
@LunchEnjoyer@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah this is so annoying… I hate the focus they have, has me thinking of also not throwing all eggs in one basket with these services…

Haphazard9479,

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.

LunchEnjoyer,
@LunchEnjoyer@lemmy.world avatar

Using a Web browser when you have thousands fo files needing to be synced is a terrible experience…

not_a_bot_i_swear,

That’s exactly the problem. They do a lot of things and every single one of them is missing features.

Apollo2323,

But their whole sales pitch is the privacy community. Of course if you care about privacy you will be using Linux and not Windows or MacOS.

0xD,

And basically no one is using Linux, so why would they develop it for that with limited resources?

Apollo2323,

People who cares about privacy and security use Linux! Wtf are you talking about

0xD,

Well I do! I even work in security! And I use Windows! I bet I’ve blown your mind. Must be real nice to have such a simplistic world view.

FutileRecipe,

They’re obviously talking about the sheer number of users. Windows has something like 10x as many, which most people know. From Wikipedia:

For desktop and laptop computers, Microsoft’s Windows is the most used at 69%, followed by Apple’s macOS at 21%, and Google’s ChromeOS at 3.7% (in the US up to 7.9% ), and desktop Linux at 3.2%, so on traditional PCs Linux sums up to 7% share (ChromeOS is a different OS, but regular Linux can be added to it).

So Linux only wins if 100% of their users use it and only 10% of Windows use it, which won’t happen. Of a company has limited resources, they’re obviously going to focus their efforts on where they can attract the most number of users (and most money). In this/most cases, that’s Windows.

KISSmyOS,

So Linux only wins if…

What does “Linux” win then?

FutileRecipe, (edited )

A higher return on devs’ effort (meaning more users reached and more profit) and thus the effort and focus of said devs, which is the chief complaint of the OP and relpies. Apologies, thought it was obvious in the context.

Haphazard9479,

Proton is super easy to use. They are a gateway drug into privacy. Its close enough to google for any pleb to use. If you are using linux, then you probably dont need to be airplane spoon feed privacy.

synapse1278,
@synapse1278@lemmy.world avatar

You can try rclone but given the Proton Drive backen is in beta, it’s probably not going to be a simple setup.

Papanca,

Thank you for the link. I might try it one day, but my skills are still very basic.

dazo,

@Papanca @synapse1278

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 . 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.

Papanca,

Thank you for taking the time to type all this, much appreciated! I will look into Filen and Tresorit.

8rhn6t6s,

I’m not familiar with Proton drive but with Google drive you can use a vfs cache if I’m not mistaken to make things faster.

dazo,

@8rhn6t6s There are some caching which need to be enabled with the protondrive rclone mounting. But it is still slow.

Remember that non-E2EE storages (such as Google Drive, AWS/S3, etc) can do the upload a lot faster as a starting point, as there is no client-side encryption of the data being uploaded (and the reverse; decrypting downloaded data). This decryption/encryption happens in the protondrive "module" in rclone. On top of that comes that files are split up into "chunks" which are transferred via separate HTTP calls. And I have no idea (aka "have not read the code) how the unlock key of the PGP key is handled in rclone. All of these things combined together impacts the performance.

That said, I've had a quick test on a Windows computer with Proton Drive installed. It wasn't blazingly fast there as well, but still felt faster than rclone.

My guess is that it's partly that the rclone implementation has room for improvements on how the Proton Drive server-side APIs are called and some of it is related to crypto implementation performance.

For example, I dunno if the Proton Drive APIs support HTTP/2 protocol or QUIC ... And I dunno if the rclone supports them as well. Just in this aspect there are lots of room to cut down on the "connection handshake" as HTTP/2 and QUIC supports more efficient handshakes and can also have multiple streams sending data in parallel - using a single handshake. If the native Proton Drive app on Windows implements this, that may explain some of the performance differences.

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