14 DAY TRIAL // Dropbox 2.7.49 experimental version, a client for an online service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere, has been released by the developers with a small number of fixes. Even so, one of the changes will certainly get the attention of the Linux users.
The Dropbox developers are still making improvements for the experimental branch and they seem to find numerous problems to fix and new features to implement. One thing is for sure, this is one of the most long-lived development branches of Dropbox.
The latest build of Dropbox, 2.7.49, is a small one and the fixes seem trivial at a first glance, but Linux users (and especially Ubuntu users) will find some good news. According to the changelog, a bug where the 2.4 > 2.7 upgrade path caused an unlink (the client didn't used the proper folders anymore) has been fixed, libappindicator1 is now being used on Unity, and an issue where old aborted Dropbox installs could have blocked newer installs has been fixed.
The libappindicator1 mention is actually quite important. Users have been reporting this particular issue for some time now. Dropbox was installing just fine in Ubuntu systems, but users couldn't see the indicator in the top bar and it was impossible to access the settings.
The Ubuntu community has already found the problem a few months ago, which was to install the libappindicator1 library. This allows the Dropbox client indicator to load properly. This issue has been fixed by the Dropbox developers by adding the libappindicator1 as a dependency.
The 2.7.x branch of Dropbox also sports some other interesting features, like the auto sign-in installers, which are only available for Windows and Mac OS X. According to the developers, the auto sign-in installer will not ask the users' Dropbox username and password a second time, if the user is already logged in on the Dropbox website. It's unsure whether this feature will ever make it to Linux.
Also, keep in mind that Linux users don't have access to binary files of the latest Dropbox client. This means that you will only get the source file and you will have to compile it by yourself. If you already have another version installed, you will need to purge it.
Check out the official announcement for more details about this release. Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.
Download Dropbox 2.7.49 Experimental for Linux