Dropbox installation issue using MATE

[Shin Darth]

If you are using LinuxMint MATE Edition and try:

sudo apt-get install dropbox

it will install package "nemo-dropbox" (and a lot of dependent packages) which smash everything (mate-panel doens't run at system startup).

I think it should install nautilus-dropbox or caja-dropbx(I didn't tested if this last works properly) instead.

[kurp (ciemnogrodzianin)]

Nautilus-dropbox package works just fine.
In case of caja-dropbox Synaptic forces to install long list of Gnome packages for some reason, so I've resigned. One of dependencies needs to be some metapackage, which seems to be quite obvious mistake.

[Dirk Haar (mideal.de)]

Workaround:
-uninstall nautilus-dropbox.
-install dropbox from www.dropbox.com,
-then install caja-dropbox.

[Igor Santos (igorsantos07)]

Update from Linux Mint Petra:

- caja-dropbox depends on dropbox, which in turn calls nemo-dropbox. As I guess everyone is aware, Nemo is the Cinnamon version of Caja. Thus, this makes NO SENSE AT ALL.
- this weird dependency in turn installs Nemo - and in turn the entire Cinnamon environment - just so you have Dropbox. Crazy eh?
- As it turns out, in the end caja-desktop does not get installed as it depends directly on the dropbox package, but nemo-dropbox was installed instead.

Conclusion: you can't get Dropbox integration if you're using MATE through the natural / obvious path.

The workaround seems to be installing nautilus-dropbox, which downloads the dropbox installer directly from their website and sets up the correct dependencies of caja-dropbox, not touching Nemo packages.

Please, repository maintainers, fix this weird dependency hell! This is very weird and annoying for common users, as Dropbox is supposed to have file explorers integration and it does not happen out of the (drop)box :P

[Igor Santos (igorsantos07)]

EDIT on the previous post, since I wrote it in a hurry instead of trying everything first:

1. nautilus-dropbox seems like a clean way to install the dropbox executable, although it does not fixes the dependency hell to get caja-dropbox installed; asking for the package through apt-get still tries to install nemo-dropbox (and then remove nautilus-dropbox at the same time, since they are conflicting and not equivalent I guess)

2. using apt-get download + dpkg -i I could manage to install caja-dropbox and it's apparently working (after restarting Caja I got a dropbox context menu entry, although Dropbox is still getting file status and thus I can't see any sync icon on my files).

[Michael Webster (miketwebster)]

I believe this has been fixed in Mint 17. I'll mention maybe backporting it.

[Igor Santos (igorsantos07)]

cool, thanks :)