One redditor asked about it on the most recent AMA:
Hi, is there a plan to release protondrive for linux?
Proton CEO’s answer:
We’re currently looking at options for how to fund this. It’s an expensive development because Linux has so many different flavors and we need deep integration with the filesystem, and it is not yet clear if there are enough Linux users that would allow us to offset the cost of this development. Like many things Linux, it may eventually just have to subsidized from Proton’s reserve budget. That doesn’t mean it won’t get done, it will just take longer since we are also subsidizing several other efforts at this time, such as the Proton VPN free servers for elections campaign: https://protonvpn.com/blog/free-servers-before-elections
-Andy
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1ff211y/comment/lmrdepr
It’s unclear that they need to handle a specific flavor when they could release a Flatpak. I think the community wouldn’t have any problem tweaking the dependencies for particular distros.
It wouldn’t be the distribution method that is challenging, it’s the complicated task of monitoring your filesystem for changes, and working with a dozen or so different file systems to do it (the way it’s accomplished on an ext4 partition might not work on btrfs, for example).
I’m not skilled enough to be able to speak to that.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but all I need is a fuse plugin. I don’t need specific syncing like a OneDrive/Google Drive app.
I always see people asking for it, but I guess we’re actually the vocal minority in this situation.
Would it help them to just pick a single distribution, open source the client, and have the community figure out how to build for other distributions?
Edit: also, part of the reason there aren’t many Linux users is because there’s missing clients Edit2: they wrote this in the AMA: On your first question, we are in touch with the rclone dev working on Proton Drive integration and they have our API specs and documentation, and we’re available to answer any questions that they might have
ProtonDrive bridge (like they have for Mail), that handles the encryption, that exposes a localhost webdav endpoint that can be mounted.
This would be a pretty reasonable comprise in my opinion. Works like mail bridge (maybe calendar could get some love too?) And everyone is happy.
It’s not fancy like an automatic folder sync thing, but at least I could mount a Protondrive directory and do my own syncing myself (I’m a Linux nerd afterall). There is no need for “deep filesystem integration” as he claims.
The same thing could be used for Calendar with Caldav feed as well. A single “Bridge” app could me made to handle Mail, Drive, Calendar
Maybe build something off of FUSE?
