OneDrive is Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s iCloud and Google Drive. Well, that’s not entirely accurate, since OneDrive actually preceded those cloud file storage and syncing services by at least five years. OneDrive’s functionality and design have reached a point of slick usability and reliability with a rich feature set, online office apps, and wide platform support. OneDrive has attractive and capable web and mobile interfaces, photo AI tagging, real-time collaborative editing, and powerful search.
Since Microsoft does not have an official Linux client the futures are very limited in Linux.
To use OneDrive in Linux you a number of options:
- The first option is to use the web interface to upload and download files. The problem with this option is that if you are offline you would not have access to your files. You can also set up OneDrive as a Web-App on your system. To learn about how you can create a Web-App for OneDrive checkout our Web-App Guide.
- The second option is to use Insync to sync OneDrive with your local files. This is the best option for having access to files offline as well as the ability to sync on the fly. We have covered Insync in detail in our guide to Insync.
- Use the free OneDrive Linux Client that has been developed by Alex Braunegg which is a fork from the abandoned skilion client
A free Microsoft OneDrive Client that supports OneDrive Personal, OneDrive for Business, OneDrive for Office365, and SharePoint. This powerful and highly configurable client can run on all major Linux distributions, FreeBSD, or as a Docker container. It supports one-way and two-way sync capabilities and securely connects to Microsoft OneDrive services.
Features
- State caching
- Real-Time file monitoring with Inotify
- File upload / download validation to ensure data integrity
- Resumable uploads
- Support OneDrive for Business (part of Office 365)
- Shared Folder support for OneDrive Personal and OneDrive Business accounts
- SharePoint / Office365 Shared Libraries
- Desktop notifications via libnotify
- Dry-run capability to test configuration changes
- Prevent major OneDrive accidental data deletion after the configuration change
- Support for National cloud deployments (Microsoft Cloud for US Government, Microsoft Cloud Germany, Azure, and Office 365 operated by 21Vianet in China)
What’s missing
- While local changes are uploaded right away, remote changes are delayed until next automated sync cycle when using –monitor
- Ability to encrypt/decrypt files on-the-fly when uploading/downloading files from OneDrive
- Support for Windows ‘On-Demand’ functionality so the file is only downloaded when accessed locally
- A GUI for configuration management
Skilion was abandoned in 2018 and is no longer developed But Alex’s program is alive and well and you can start the install process by going to our OneDrive install section.
