You can build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
1 out of a thousand people might do that, the others will buy the product. That's why people use it, most people don't want to build everything themselves.
But as usual it forgets the "For a Linux user" part.
If we remove the whole linux section and just ask "why not map a folder in Explorer" it's a reasonable question, probably even more reasonable in 2026 than in 2007. The network got faster and more reliable, and the dropbox access got slower.
It’s kind of wild to read through these comments and realize hn is still riffing on the same ideas. Is it e2ee? Does it run on Linux? Who would pay for something you can slap together in a weekend with a few bash scripts?
Really highlights this community’s values, skills, and blind spots.
Also a bit of a bummer that the privacy and open source situations today are even worse in many ways.
The equivalent of this is advice from a friend of mine who likes different teas, "just learn to read hanzi like I did and then you can select the ones you like". Apparently there's one called "government tea" (in the original) which he expected to taste of old leather, musty paperwork, and stale cigarette smoke.
Obvious. Explorer even has support built in for transparent ‘native’ gui support. I’m not even sure why you felt the need to explain it in detail. Next you’ll be explaining how to walk. (/s, I loved it)
You can build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.