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Comment by mshook | Hacker News Reader

Regarding 1): rclone does the job. That's what I use with B2.

B2 plus rclone works well, but for many it's potentially significantly more expensive than the standard "all you can eat" $5 a month plan. In my case B2 would workout at roughly 4x the monthly cost and that's before factoring in the fact B2 charges for downloads as well as uploads. An official Linux client would be significantly better value.

As they've said though, the usage of most linux users isn't on par with Windows / Mac users. They simply would crush themselves with people attempting to backup 200TB nas devices for $5.00 a month. If you want any perspective on how crazy the fringes are with data storage and how they impact providers (such as amazon, google, backblaze, etc.) simply read the stories on reddit /r/datahoarder and you'll quickly see why this decision makes sense from a business perspective.

Very small numbers of people already do this on Mac/Windows using tricks like mouting the NAS as an iSCSI device to backup absurd amounts on the $5 plan. The business model is clearly that the legions of small users subsidize the "whales" and Linux desktops are a drop in the ocean vs the Windows/Mac world too. Do you have a source for where Backblaze claimed the usage of most Linux users isn't on par?

> Do you have a source for where Backblaze claimed the usage of most Linux users isn't on par?

One of their employees pretty much said exactly that here on HN recently. I don't have the comment bookmarked or anything like that so I can't cite it for you, but I do remember reading it.

I'm paraphrasing, of course, but s/he basically said "the math doesn't work out" (for the regular service, not B2 (obviously)).

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