How to Install Dropbox on Ubuntu

Dropbox is stand-out player in cloud storage and its Linux clients works really well on Ubuntu once installed properly. While Google Drive comes out of the box on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and later, Dropbox is still a preferred cloud storage tool on Linux in terms of features it offers.

Installing Dropbox from Command Line

We will install the wget package using the apt command.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install wget

Dropbox cli version is available for both 32 and 64 bit editions, we will download Dropbox upon out version.

$ cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86" | tar xzf -

After executing this command, It will create a new hidden folder named .dropbox-dist in our $HOME directory.

Run the following command to start the Dropbox from .dropbox-dist folder.

$ ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

Now open the browser and navigate to the above link to connect system with your dropbox account.

Enter Dropbox username, password and click Sign-in.

The server is connected to our dropbox account, we should see a message like below.

This computer is now linked to Dropbox. Welcome Smart

Folder named Dropbox will be created in our home directory. keep the data in this folder to access it from any devices.

$ ls Dropbox/