Cloud Storage Options for Linux Users: Now's the Time

One of the biggest stories of this week was Google's announcement of its long-awaited Google Drive cloud storage solution. You can sign up for 5GB of free storage from Google, use it efficiently with your Android device, and find out more about it here. However, many Linux users were more than annoyed that the cloud storage service doesn't support Linux. That changed on Tuesday, though, when Teresa Wu at Google assured Linux users, in a Google+ discussion, that they shoud "hang tight!" because Linux support is coming.

A new version of Ubuntu also arrived this week, and Canonical was quick to note that it too provides 5GB of free cloud storage to Ubuntu users through its Ubuntu One platform. If you're a Linux user who isn't yet taking advantage of cloud service and syncing conveniences, it's time to make plans to do so.

Google hasn't yet said exactly when Linux users can expect Google Drive to support them, but it's likely to come soon. Many Ubuntu One users are already familiar with having extensive, free cloud storage available to them.

And, it's worth keeping in mind that if you're willing to pay a very little bit, you can get a whole lot of free cloud storage. The price-per-gigabyte for storage has been declining for years, which is exactly why players like Google can offer services like Drive.

For example, it only costs $30 a year to bump up a Google Drive subscription to 25GB of cloud storage, and you get 25GB more for Gmail storage. No doubt, the terms will be the same for Linux users. That's not much money for a lot of cloud storage. For $60 a year, Google will give you a whopping 100GB of cloud storage.

My free cloud storage solution of choice has been Dropbox for quite some time, but I'm likely to switch to Google Drive and pay for extra cloud storage as soon as the Linux support arrives. Google is already underpricing Dropbox and will probably extend that strategy going forward. 

Just as it took a few years for users to wake up to the fact that portable USB drives offer a lot of flexibility  and convenience, it's taking some time for many Linux users to warm up to storage in the cloud. At this point, these solutions are very secure, very cheap and very convenient. They make it easy to access documents, photos, music and files of all types from any device, any time. If you haven't taken the cloud storage leap, now is the time.