Dr. Chaos

Well, I know this is a very straight forward process and that is does not require much of an explanation, but I have been asked to explain how to install Dropbox on Ubuntu 10.04 after my Dropbox Icons to Match Ubuntu 10.04 Theme post. So I will.

First things first. What is this Dropbox thing? Well, Dropbox is a service to store and share files on-line, much link Ubuntu One, but with the major plus of having a cross platform client software.

Some of the main advantages I’ve found so far is that it only uploads what it needs. For example if you need to upload a 700MB file named ubuntu.iso and someone has uploaded the same file before it will appear on your online files but it will NOT upload it again. How great is that?

Another good feature of it’s client is that you can enable the lan option if you have multiple computers on the same local network so when you upload a file from one of them the others get synchronized over the lan. No time wasted downloading files from the internet.

How Do I Install Dropbox?

To install Dropbox first get a copy of the client from: http://www.dropbox.com/downloading?os=lnx. Select the .deb file (this tutorial is for Ubuntu remember?) and install it.

What you are installing is a Nautilus extension. During the installation it will download and install the proprietary daemon that it need in order to work.

Further Reading

This installation comes with the standard blue icons for the toolbar. If you would like them to match your Ubuntu theme take a look at: Dropbox Icons to Match Ubuntu 10.04 Theme

So this is it. Enjoy!

And of course you need a supported browser. YouTube says you need Google Chrome or Safari.

Anyway I tried on Firefox and as of version 3.6.3 it does NOT work.

The first thing you will notice is the lovely new “loading”  screen.

Other things noticeable are that the controls are different and when playing it doesn’t show the download progress.

One thing that I didn’t like is that the video does not run very smoothly and the quality is not very good either. But, it’s a beta after all.

On the bright side the CPU usage is way lower than that with Flash. So, when everything is ready this will be definitely my preferred way of watching YouTube videos!

No a little video quality comparison.

Note that the screenshot are taken from the same video and the same browser and at the same point in the video (or close enough). The only difference is that ones uses the HTML5 Player and the other Flash.

Now if you want to try ir for yourself just go to: http://www.youtube.com/html5 and select the beta from the bottom.

Enjoy!