Proton Drive is Now Faster (And Getting a Linux Client Soon)
If you have been following Proton Drive this year, you know the pace of development has picked up. The developers have been busy rolling out a shared SDK across all their clients, and each update has introduced major improvements.
This week's update is the biggest one yet.
Two things have landed at once. Proton pushed a cryptography overhaul that makes file encryption a lot faster and quietly confirmed that a native Linux client is now in development.
A faster Drive experience
According to Proton's testing, uploads are now up to 3x faster across platforms, and downloads are up to 2x faster.
Everyday tasks like Android photo backup and macOS file sync finish quicker, and the Photos section has been cleaned up too, with faster album loading and smoother timeline scrolling even in large libraries.
All of this is a result of Proton pulling together the work from their Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and web teams into one integrated engine. Whereas earlier, every platform was running its own separate implementation, which meant development efforts were scattered across the board.
Now they all run on the same codebase, which means improvements roll out everywhere at the same time rather than platform by platform.
Encryption got a serious upgrade
Proton Drive has used OpenPGP to encrypt file contents since day one. The latest update moves to a newer version of that, and the key change here is that encryption now makes full use of the device's hardware.
The numbers shared by Proton make the difference clearly apparent. On mobile, a 4MB file that used to take 97ms to encrypt now takes 32ms. On desktop-class hardware, the same job goes from 12ms down to 3ms.
In practical terms, this means encrypting an HD video on your phone dropped from about 90 seconds to around 30, and on a desktop the same goes from around 12 seconds to 3.
Existing users are urged to update their clients to take advantage of these improvements.
Linux users, rejoice! 🎉
The most interesting bit of info in the SDK announcement is very easy to miss. Proton has confirmed that they are currently building a native Drive client for Linux, which is being put together from scratch using the SDK.
Earlier this year, the January SDK update had briefly mentioned a Linux client as something on the roadmap. This week's post is a step past that, with them confirming it is now in active development.
For years, many of you have been vocal about the lack of a native Proton Drive app on Linux, and if our comments section is anything to go by, it has been one of the most requested things from the Proton ecosystem.
The SDK is what is making it possible now, and building on it means the Linux client will not be playing catch-up with other platforms when it does arrive. If you haven't already, you can check out Proton Drive via our partner link below while supporting us in the process.
Source: It's FOSS