I wonder how many Linux users are using something as unreliable and
untrustworthy as a cloud storage provider that uses a proprietary interface?
I use syncthing to keep my files under my control, and it works
wonderfully on SL7.x. I also find to the extent I have to use Box (what
Cornell provides for "cloud storage"), the web UI works in Firefox ESR
just fine.
I also wonder how much appimages / flatpaks / snaps will help with this?
I already find that software in an appimage "just works" for what I've
tried (VLC and Kdenlive to name a couple).
I guess I don't know the market, but I feel like with IBM also involved,
if you want to try and cater to enterprise linux at all, you'll be
looking at also supporting EPEL. Though I don't know how interested
dropbox is in large contracts. Maybe Box (though I have no idea if
they've a rpm or local program of some sort) is targeting that market more?
--
James Pulver
CLASSE Computer Group
Cornell University
On 1/7/19 7:43 AM, MAH Maccallum wrote:
Jose is of course quite right about the Dropbox
developers and indeed I have protested to
the Dropbox people about their unreasonable
attitude. However, that does not solve the problem.
I emphasize that this is just an example of a recurrent
problem I have had about the availability of libraries
and support packages under SL. So while I appreciate
Jose's point about stability etc. I'm surprised users at
CERN, Fermilab etc are not pressing on that point more
often (maybe they are, unknown to me) and causing more
effort to bring things up to date.
Malcolm
On 07/01/2019 12:35, Jose Marques wrote:
On 7 Jan 2019, at 12:16, MAH Maccallum <[email protected]> wrote:
For example I cannot currently use Dropbox under SL
although I have manually re-partitioned and re-formatted
to use ext4 rather than xfs, since Dropbox insists on ext4.
The error message tells me I do not have glibc 2.19, and
advises I should update to Ubuntu 14.04+ or Fedora 21+
I would say that DropBox and other software vendors are at fault. They are
putting their developer convenience above that of their users. Having said that
the desktop Linux market is so small that it does not make commercial sense to
do otherwise. The whole point of SL/Centos is that it is stable and doesn't
change. This has the side-effect of making the later point releases quite out
of date. I believe RHEL8 is in beta so this will reset the clock.
I can't speak to Ubuntu except to say that 14 is quite old. For Fedora you really want to
be on the latest release. We upgraded our labs to Fedora 28 late last year and are
already having to update to Fedora 29 due to serious issues in updates to the former
release. Even when there are no problems we find that more packages break with time.
Previous releases may still be under "support" but they get less developer love
than the latest release.
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