Comment 33 for bug 909488

Even though this is an old discussion, I would still like to add a few things to it. I'm a systems administrator and I believe most of my kind would agree with me when I say that installing binaries in a user folder is bad practice in general. I work in an organization where Dropbox is used by a lot of people on both Windows and Linux systems, mostly because it's a convenient way for people to share files with other people outside of the organisation.

It's really annoying to find that there are still software developers who think they have the right to work around well established policies that are there for the stablility, security and managability of computer systems, with the argument that it's more convenient for unpriveleged users to be able to update the software on their own. I'm glad to see a Debian maintainer take action against this and come up with a solution that works, shame the Dropbox people feel a need to work against him or at least not cooperate.

I tried to make the same case almost a year ago on https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=54778 but that was for the Windows installer of Dropbox. It seems the same goes for the Linux client. In our organisation we try to keep the crap that gets into the users' space to a minimum, wether it's their Linux homedirectory or their Windows profile. That is for the benefit of both our users and our sysadmins.

I'm actually wondering why Dropbox isn't bundeling their binaries in their .deb package in the first place. They already have a repository in place to do this, and that way upgrading is done automatically with the regular system updates. This would be easier to maintain for everyone, because in a professional organisation updated should be automated anyway with no need for intervention from regular users, while at home the primary user of any machine would be the administrator of that machine anyway.

In any case, Raphaël keep up the good work and I hope the Dropbox people will be more forthcoming with a solution soon.