Install Dropbox in Ubuntu

If you're new to this, then before talking about Dropbox in Ubuntu let me give a humble and a brief introduction to it. The days are over where we used to use a single cellphone and a PC at where you work. Nowadays we use multiple computers and mobile phones, meaning that we'll have to work with several different operating systems daily.

Say that you have to take daily backups of your files at your office desktop PC or home, etc but would like to have them in your Cellphone and Laptop and the cool tablet you brought few days ago, etc then the more devices that you have the more time consuming it will be to sync all those files into all those devices with multiple operating systems (whether its MS Windows/Mac OSX/GNU-Linux to Android, etc).

In that sense Dropbox is an online cloud storage that has the ability to "send" backups/files across several operating systems/computers using the Internet. So, once registered, Dropbox lets you add several devices to the online account. Now whenever you add a file to the Dropbox account, it'll automatically send all those data across the devices "attached" to it!. Big time saver right?.

Any "issues" :) ?

I'm afraid there is. I mean, the idea is pretty amazing and easy to use, etc but being a cloud storage, they're bound to laws. So, according to the developers themselves, it's certainly not 100% private/secure. Although this is certainly not something unique to Dropbox because most of the time you use Cloud storage services, these servers save your data in multiple locations thus creating complexities in laws and other whatnots.

Anyhow, in the latest edition of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (should work in 10.04 and 10.10 or anything after 8.04 :D) we can easily install Dropbox by following the below procedure.

1. First go to this Dropbox download page and choose your package (whether it's 32 or 64bit), for this I choose the 32-bit.

Step - 1

2. Then when asked, chose to open it with "Ubuntu software Center" which should "show" something similar to the below one.

3. Now click on "Install" button and go to the next stage.

4. Then you should be greeted with the another window, from that choose "next" as in the below screenshot.

5. After that it'll install the "nautilus plug-in".

Then click on the "Start Dropbox" button which should take you to the installation of core (proprietary) application. Then when it's finished downloading, you should be asked to integrate your Dropbox account as shown below, which is the last thing in the installing steps as well.

 

That's it, now you've installed Dropbox in Ubuntu!.