Google Drive, formerly Google Docs, is a file storage and synchronization service created by Google. They are a multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products that include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software.
Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud, share files, and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with collaborators. Google Drive includes Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, an office suite that permits collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, and more. Google Drive lets you open and edit files from any device. Users get 15GB of free storage. This includes Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail. More storage can be purchased. Drive uses Google’s highly-secure, custom-built data centres.
Google Drive is a very popular cloud storage service. Files can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Keeping your files in Google Drive means that you can access them from just about anywhere — on all your devices. Drive therefore eliminates the need to email or save a file to a USB drive. And because Drive allows users to share files, working with others becomes much easier.
The service was launched in 2012 offering desktop clients for Windows and Mac OS. Official support for Linux was not tended. And this is still the case today even though one of the clients below was originally developed by a Google employee.
Fortunately, a number of budding open source developers have coded Google Drive clients for Linux. This article identifies our favourites.
To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 6 high quality open source Google Drive clients. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone who wishes to use the Drive service.
Now, let’s explore the 6 Drive clients at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.
| Google Drive Clients | |
|---|---|
| Rclone | Sync files and directories to and from Google Drive and more |
| google-drive-ocamlfuse | FUSE filesystem over Google Drive |
| Drive | Google Drive client for the commandline |
| Grive2 | Fork of the original "Grive" |
| GoSync | GUI client written in Python |
| VGrive | Client (back-end and front-end) for Google Drive |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |