Software on The Gnu Pit

Upgrading Dropbox on Linux

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 23:10:11 -0500

Dropbox provides a wrapper package to download Dropbox for Linux if you want to run the latest Dropbox. It WILL NOT update Dropbox automagically. When an update to the software is available, you’ll get a popup window notifying you. The window has two buttons - ‘Exit Dropbox’ and ‘Update’. Choosing update brings you to the Dropbox for Linux page which does nothing for you, Instead, you need to:

Exit Dropbox.
Delete the directory ~/.dropbox-dist (or rename it id you’re not comfortable deleting it). This directory contains only the program files, not your files or settings.
Restart Dropbox. The updated version should now download.

FYI - the download page also contains instructions for a headless istall via command line on a server.

Thoughts on the Atom Editor

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 14:54:03 -0500

I installed the Atom text editor quite a while ago and didn’t have much time to play around with it. Last week a friend of mine brought it up in conversation. She was extolling its virtues. I decided now would be a good time to try it out. I was moving a site to Hugo and it has a plugin for Hugo syntax.

So I fired it up and, my word, a decade later an editor window opened. What took it so long to open? I poked around a bit and noticed that I had installed a bunch of packages when I first downloaded it. So I disabled the vast majority of them, then restarted. A minor improvement. Disabled the rest. Restarted. Another minor improvement. Then I disabled some core packages for languages I wouldn’t use. No help for the incredibly slow start time.