Is OneDrive for Linux Mature Enough Yet?
I'm looking to see if anyone can speak to how life is (good, bad, or meh) with using one of the popular OneDrive clients on a common enough Linux distribution.
Ok, so allow me to set the context...
- My partner uses Windows laptop, and with next year's end of life on Win10, I need to make decision to advise them on whether we get them another Windows laptop (presumably running Win11), or finally get them to take the plunge on using Linux - (a laptop running some common enough linux distro).
- I run linux as my personal daily driver on my laptop for more than a decade, and on server side having been using and dabbling with linux since about 2004. So, i will add also that i'm all bought in on the linux, libre/free and open source lifestyle.
- I'm not a fan of Windows, but not judging that others like my partner use it. By the way, my partner doesn't care about tech nor computing, they simply use applications and move on with their life. (Yes, i have politely nudged them over the years to try linux, but they have been hesitant to do so without a true need, so why rock the love boat, right?)
- My partner's computing needs are quite basic, but slightly tricky...Here is what i mean:
- They use a web browser or mobile apps for the vast majority of their compouting/app needs
- For office suite, they use desktop versions of MS Word and Excel
- Quite importanrtly, they use OneDrive to sync their files (and there are alot important files for them and our family)
So, from a computing needs perspective, that's pretty much it. For every other function and need (e.g. email, productivity, etc.), they simply use browser or mobile apps as noted above.
You might be thinking, well, move them to linux, and if they like Microsoft, then use the Word or Excel browser app, right? Well, they LOATH having to use the browser or mobile versions of Microsoft Office. Being of a certain age, they might be ok with LibreOffice, since it mimics close enough to desktop versions of Word, Excel desktop apps...So, I think the desktop and office suite are less of a problem to find an alternative if needed...
But, OneDrive, yeah, this is the one app that they won't let go. Not because they love Microsoft (they could careless about the company), but because they have a good trust and experience of its functions to date on Windows. Onedrive has really empowered their workflow. That is, because they jump from browser to mobile app often through their day, etc....the feature of having a file easily and reliably sync (via onedrive) between devices is probably the most important need that they have.
Now, before anyone says, well try "NextCloud"...yeah, been there and done that. Nextcloud works wonderfully for me (has for years)...but it does not conform exactly to my partner's workflow. I've tried Collabera, but could never get it to work reliably enough. I want to state again, i am a strong, emphatic open source advocate...But if my partner can't get their work done without me constantly diagnosing and fixing things....then its not proper solution for them.
So, while i have a solid linux or open source option for all of their other needs, Onedrive is the challenge here. So, can anyone advise, how things are with onedrive clients on linux? Any particular client that is worth me looking into? What about a specific linux distro that, maybe possibly works best with a particular onedrive linux client? I should add that my partner is willing to pay for file synching and does NOT want to have me self-host things for this single function since they don't want to have me kill myself in supporting it. So, if there is a valid alternative to onedrive that is awesome on linux, and that they can pay a company to reliably host, that is welcome as well.
Or, should i simply advise them to stick to Windows through EOL, get them set on Win11 along with native Onedrive, and move on with our lives?
I'm thankful for anyone's recommendations and advice. Cheers!
In your situation the quick answer is no
There is no client and whilst you can 'make do' and I'm guessing you would be happy to, equally your partner will want it to 'just work'.
Bite the bullet, invest in Win11 and you will both be happier.
Signed by a longtime Linux user who has been down that path with his partner.
I’m with this person. Don’t do it. I’ve not been on a Linux desktop since the 2000s, but have been family, friend, and sometimes client tech support forever. It’s been my experience that if you counsel family on tech, any and all issues become your fault - especially if you counsel them to switch OS platforms.
This includes UX changes, desktop skins, alerts that are different or not loud enough. All of it can become a breeding ground for resentment.
The only way I’d try this is if they really really want to do it and the idea came from them originally. Even then I’d throw out every possible issue I could think of ahead of time as warning. I’d actually behave as though I was trying to talk them out of doing it.
Then, and only then, when they discover how snappy, clean, stable, and quiet it is in comparison, could it be a win.
But if you try and ‘move them to it’ I seriously doubt it going well.
Linux folks usually have an affinity for tech - like myself - but folks who only use tech for utility have a different mindset.
One more idea- try a dual boot a few times to see if your partner is willing to switch? That might prep them for it?
Just a thought.
Oh yeah, agreed! This is sort of why i even asked folks on this site...Because i'm trying to get the perspective, opinions, and advise of others. :-) My partner and i have been married for close to 25 years...so over all this time, i know now not to try and nudge them into a particular tech or even non-tech solution that i might favor (maybe because of my inclinations).
Instead of dual-booting, actually for the last few years, i've favored loading up a bunch of linux distros on a usb keychain, and leveraging ventoy (). Basically, ventoy allows for storing whatever number of linux distros can fit on a usb device, and then offers a neat little Ui to temporarily load a distro - which isn't different than trying a distro via the old school way of those "Live CDs/DVDs"...but ventoy makes it easier to use more than 1 distro...and of course it avoids any committment of installing a distro on a machine like dual booting requires. Not that dual booting is bad, but for my use-cases of testing out a distro, i have standardized on using ventoy. That being said, yes, for my partner, i would have them try - and try many, many multiple times - a particular distro waaaay before any such comittment is agreed upon. Right now, i'm only at the research phase for which solutions (above/beyond the base operating system) are viable. I have time since the Win11 "doomsday deadline" isn't for many, many months. :-)
Yeah, the "make do" is the part that gives me the greatest pause, hence my call out to the community here. :-)
For now, i have a little time to research, review and then decide...But, yeah my fear is that i may need to bite the bullet. We'll see. Thanks!
For the record, and clarity on the decision, the web office products and the desktop office products are NOT 1 to 1 on features and it's not just a "well obviously the younger techy people use the web version"
There are fairly standard features/uses that the web client cannot do and require downloading and using the main application. I've found this to a MAJOR hurdle for any serious professional office user who's actually using some of the more advanced features.
I know libre office does "Some of it" but the few times I've tried jumping over the years I've run into the kind of dead end that would not be acceptable.
Agreed, the browser and desktop versions of MS Office suite are definitely not 1 to 1. Thankfully, while my partner has used MS Office apps for decades, their needs are quite basic, and at least the several times we tested things, LibreOffice more than suffices for their needs. As to the differences of the browser vs desktop versions of Ms Office, they can achieve all that they need with the web versions of MS Office, they just don't like the web versions because of UI/UX dislike, and not because of any lack of functionality. Thanks for your feedback!
Good to hear.
I spent a frustrating 30 minutes saying "well you have to be able to edit this header" in web MS Word only to find out I needed to download the file because the original used some form variables rather than just a raw text header.
One of many small examples but the gaps can be surprising so I like to make extra clear that people should check everything since the gaps between the 3 (libre/ms web/ms desktop) are often surprising.
Funny you mention "between the 3", because i keep mention of this difference between 2 platforms (libreoffice and MS), but in actuality on the MS side the differences between web and desktop are enough that, really, the comparisons/research that i am undertaking could in other use-cases easily be considered 3 distinct, different enough platforms, and not only 2. ;-)
I've skimmed this and I'll answer the one big question: Is OneDrive Linux Client mature enough?
What client? There isn't a native one as far as I'm aware.
Can it be done? Yes. I used a paid for app called InSync for my OneDrive and SharePoint sync and it's pretty good, but the flaw is that it downloads the files in full (offline mode) and cannot do ghost syncing (list the files and pull when requested).
If you can live with that, InSync is great. If you can live with "mapping" then you can use rclone and it'll act as a file system mount.
I was also unaware there was an official Linux client. If there is, I wish it was available when I was in uni and lived in OneNote (which I had to run in a VM since I used my university OneDrive to sync it between devices automatically but OneDrive doesn't work under Wine, a known issue).
Edit: In the thread I linked, it seems someone has found a workaround using onedriver. I'm not sure if it would work with OneNote, but at least for syncing files, it should suffice.
Yeah, my bad....i should have been more clear that i was really asking about any of the existing clients, and whether they're any good. ;-)
Good point about my lack of specificity with respect to onedrive clients...My bad. What i should have stated/asked is something like: for existing popular clients that are commonly used on linux...are any of them mature enough for daily driver usage, etc.
Thanks very much for the referral to InSync. I will check that out!
As others said, no, there isn't a OneDrive client. Certainly none that will make your partner happy.
Also, if they use these documents in collaboration with other people, Libreoffice still isn't a full alternative. They will run into markup issues with word documents, excel weirdness, etc. Given they seem to be attached to their current workflow, I can't imagine them liking to have to switch away from MS Office entirely.
Thankfully, my partner does not leverage any complex stuff in their docs, files...and for 99.9% of the time, when they have to collaborate its only within the family...and the needs there are really quite simple. So, they are not opposed to using Libreoffice. But, we'll see, m,aybe if they start using it full-time, they will grow to dislike it? Anyway, thanks!
What you can do at the very least is install LibreOffice on their current windows laptop and have them work with it for a while. That way you know if they will run into issues and if it will be a dealbreaker in that department.
Great idea, thanks!
No, but you can use rclone and it will be a thousand fold better than anything produced by Microsoft for Linux for this case.
I use rclone to mount my nextcloud as a remote file system. Can't abide systems that just yoink all the remote files down into a local file system.
You can use the VFS capabilities, which is what I mostly use. Creates a virtual file system, when you go to 'open' the file, it will autodownload, has a cache flag as well.
This is the most recent command I had saved in my access:
Edit: May have misread your comment, if so, my bad! I hope this helps whoever out there to get it started. Super useful.
Edit 2: this script uses fusermount to force mount to a directory in your ~home folder, if one exists, it will close and reopen, this is great when you set it as a startup script in the background.
Not at my computer right now for exact details but I used a unit file to mount my Nextcloud just using 'rclone mount' and rclone's config file.
Isn't it wonderful we have so many ways of bending our OS and tools to fit the way we want to work.
Good to know it can work with OneDrive too.
Edit: you have 'rclone mount' as well. Didn't see that the first time I read your script lol
Not that its directly inr reply to you but I believe with rclone you can also use vfs with
serveand spin up a SFTP or WEBDAV server, but I could be wrong. I typically use the WEBDAV command to view my S3-like buckets since it's so much easier and better than any other resource.Rclone is seriously great!
Now this is interesting! I use rclone via a little bash script to backup stuff for another family member to their onedrive...But, didn't know rclone was enough to use as a sort of alternaitve to onedrive - at least for active file synching - if i read your comment correctly. You now gave me a rabbit hole to research! Thanks!
I’ve used rclone to mount one drive to my Linux server for years. It works quite well. I had issues with a Google drive mount, but never had issues with my one drive mount. I highly recommend setting it to use as much VFS cache on your system disk as you can spare.
I've worked in tech and IT since the 90's. I say the following with warmth, caring, and honesty, borne of decades of Familial IT Support. Zero snark.
Never, not once, have I ever met someone who was tech ambivalent who was happy with using non-standard stuff. Ever. If they don't care now, they never will, and you are tilting at windmills with anything other than just get a Win11 computer and call it a day.
It's not that Windows is the end-all of UI, or anything like that. We all know that is far from the case! But what it is, is exactly what the vast majority of people use, and its problems are easily googleable, with most common answers readily available. That's worth a lot more than fellow tech folks think, when the person involved doesn't want to engage with the system more than necessary. It really is.
Yeah, you are not wrong! My normal route would be to dive into linux and open source software, and "do battle" to get something setup, and then invest lots of time in educating a family member, etc....But my scars of the past, have me giving a bit of pause, and i figure i'd ask the community first to see what the state of things is nowadays...But, yeah, unless i can find a rokc solid equivalent solution....it might be the case where i bit the bullet and give'em the Win11 path. But, there's still a little research to be done; so we'll see. :-) Thanks!
You mentioned not wanting to self-host, but I'll poke that bear a bit...
Have you considered syncthing? You don't even have to self-host in the traditional sense, just be on the same network as the device you want to sync with syncthing running on both.
We use this to sync our laptops before we go anywhere, then when we come back home, start our laptops again to sync back to our desktops. It runs very fast over our wireless network too.
There are apps for it to run in the background on Windows, OSX, and Linux.
Yeah, i'm familiar with syncthing, and very much agree that it works wonders while on the same network...But i wonder about use outside of the LAN? Hmmm...then there's an "extended LAN" like Tailscale...hmmm?
Welp, you gave me yet another alternative for me to research. :-) Very much appreciate the idea, thanks!
Sync thing works pretty flawlessly over the internet. Obviously you are limited by the upload/download speed of your network. It takes care of the same NAT and firewall punching that Tailscale does. It doesn’t piggyback on the Tailscale connections by default, but it does all the same stuff so it doesn’t need to. I think you can make it run over Tailscale if you hardcode the Tailscale IP addresses and disable all the NAT traversal options, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
If your partner hates the web office products, I cannot imagine them adapting well to open-source alternatives like LibreOffice, which are a far more jarring transition ime. That in addition to the lack of OneDrive support means that it's probably not a great idea to switch them to Linux.
Actually, my partner and i are of a certain age, and they in particular like/enjoy the way libreOffice looks because they say it reminds them of a time when the UI of MS Office/Word, etc. was better looking, easier to use....as compared to the UI/look-and-feel of Ms Office apps nowadays! I think "jarring transition" is a fair phrase to describe the differences between the 2 different office suites. :-) buit, what is it that they say, different strokes for different folks? and, my partner most definitely likes the "old school" looking vibe of LibreOffoce vs MS Office. ;-)
Ah, yeah, I can definitely see someone with older-school tastes in UX/UI liking LibreOffice, fair enough!
I'm pretty sure what you need is https://www.insynchq.com/ as it is a fairly full featured OneDrive (and more) for Linux. It's not free but it isn't expensive and is well supported, as G33k said. It should get you by.
I am not a Linux expert, but my understanding is that GNOME added OneDrive support earlier this year, and therefore the latest versions of distros like Ubuntu and Linux Mint now support OneDrive out of the box. Or this at least is what GNOME 46's release notes write:
That said, my understanding is that it doesn't save or sync files offline, so you need to be online to access your files. And I must also stress that I don't actually use a desktop Linux regularly and haven't tried this, so I would also be interested to hear from anyone who knows more about this.
I have actually been planning to switch to Linux Mint myself, and one reason I think I could finally do it now is the promise of OneDrive support, if it indeed exists and is reliable. But I just haven't had the time to test it myself. Hence, any first hand information would be very valuable to me as well.
I remember vaguely hearing about this those many months ago in one of the linux podcasts that i listen to...but back then, of course, didn't have to need. But, now that you mention it, i wonder how it would work? My partner would not be opposed to using Gnome - as noted - they don;t care about the base OS...they only care about the UI of the Office suite. So, if it works fine, could be an option, i suppose. Yeah, this is certainly another rabbit hole to research. Thanks for the tip!
This quick video goes through the basic process and how it works, or at least how it worked some 5 months ago in Ubuntu. That's pretty much how far I've got with my research. It's been one of those things that I'll test "next weekend", for almost half a year now.
Thanks for sharing that video! At a quick glance, it seems that the gnoem file manager seems to employ a onedrive:// sort of protocol prefix for that mounted drive....which makes me wonder if Gnome file handler is simply implenting a sort of wrapper around webdav - which isn't bad....simply trying to guess here. Also the title of the doc the person showed had "Remote" in its title...so another clue that the file isn't locally mirrored, but rather, well, remotely accessed....which, again, not a bad thing. But this helps me understand how things might behave if/when i play with this a bit more. Anyway, thanks again for sharing this video! I'll dive in for sure!
github.com/abraunegg/onedrive is the only free client that exists. It works pretty good but doesn't do local storage.
As menioned rsync can do it as well with the same issue.
Yeah, this is one of the clients that i am aware of. Rsync can work, but i need something more automatic. Thanks anyway!
It looks like there’s unofficial WebDAV support in OneDrive (WinSCP docs on how to use it), if you want to mount it in through a network partition.
No guarantees that it’ll work forever, but hopefully they won’t break it with eg whatever new AI feature gets shoehorned in over the next couple years.
(edit) the API looks pretty straightforward, too, and FUSE FSes are pretty simple to write these days. You could probably ask chatGPT to spit one out and it’d do a decent job.
Ah-ha, using WebDAV, interesting indeed! Thanks!
Personally I have very good experience with Dropbox, it has been around for ages and has worked well under Linux, Windows and Android at least.
Yeah, i used dropbox several years ago. And, did so successfully on linux. I only moved away to start leveraging my own self-hosted NextCloud instance...but, for my partner, if i could move them to linux, and the only proprietary element is dropbox, which avoids needing to buy anither machine only for Win11....hmmm, this is a good alternative. Thanks for refreshing my memory of dropbox!
Something else you might consider is OnlyOffice--it's built using Office XML, has the same "look and feel" as modern MS365, and you can connect it to your NextCloud instance so it acts exactly like OneDrive syncing and sharing. Or you can get a paid OnlyOffice cloud account which will do the same thing, but you may as well use what you've got, since that's free.
I like the looks a little better in my personal opinion, as well as having tabbed documents all in one window. In terms of functionality, it's somewhere in between--much better than the web versions of MS365, missing just a few features from the native versions but according to your comments they're deep magicks your partner won't need and likely won't notice are missing. Fair warning that many keyboard shortcuts are not available for some reason, the functions are available but not tied to a shortcut. In return, some features are easier to use, such as a significantly better UI for building charts in Excel, better table and comment tools in Word, etc. (The functionality is the same, it's just an easier-to-use interface.)
I've been using OnlyOffice on Linux professionally for about 2 years as a VP at my marketing agency job and I've had no real issues with it, including footballing files back and forth with the rest of my team who are all on Win/Office. I'll put it this way: I've never once told them I'm using OnlyOffice, and they've never noticed! :)
Just another option, but worth a look if your partner wants as familiar an environment as possible to what they're currently using, with something built to work directly with your NextCloud.
Now that's a great idea! Thanks for sharing! also, good to hear that a daily driver/in real -life usage like yours showed no issues of compatibility. My partner is not needing to work with agencies or such, so glad to see their needs would be met for sure. Thanks again!
Seeking the same end-game as you, I switched my "work laptop" over to dual-booting Linux and am using LibreOffice and ProtonDrive (well, the whole Proton suite) on Linux without issue. ProtonDrive works a lot like OneDrive, without the sync issues. It's very nice and the native Linux app is great on Fedora, so I assume it runs fine on Ubuntu and other common distros. A Proton subscription is discounted substantially right now, but I understand that's still an added layer of costs if you're still paying for an MS Office subscription, so this is not the cheapest solution.
I haven't used Insync for my Linux/OneDrive setup, but if I hadn't switched to the Proton suite then I'd certainly go for it over the freeware. As a casual user my experiences with rsync haven't been smooth.
I had not even known Proton Drive existed! I had previously heard of proton mail, but never much paid attention - only because mail/calendar/contacts isn't something i was looking for. But, yeah, proton drive seems very interesting. Its a little pricey, but i think not unfairly considering the main use case for any proton products/services i imagine would be privacy-centric...and i and i believe others are not opposed to paying fair amounts for added privacy. Appreciate the recommendation; thanks!