Also, when you consider that being offline for an extended period of time means that your files are not being synced, then the purpose of Dropbox is somewhat defeated. Basically Dropbox can't sync without connectivity and if you have connectivity then you would have access to the Keybase "file store" anyway.
Yeah, no, I don't think so. If my bus or train goes through a tunnel, losing my dotfiles or my OneNote notebooks or whatever else is pretty bad.
Forget first world problems--"people almost always have connectivity" is some...like...zeroth world stuff.
I really doubt that in most modern environments (i.e. where smartphones are pervasive) that you are going to go very long without connectivity in an unplanned scenario.
"I copy files out of it to get around that it's not good at what I'm trying to use it for" is not a super winning argument, either.
KBFS is fine. I use it for stuff like SSH keys. It's fine. It's not Dropbox and it isn't substitutable and it doesn't need capes.
The point I was trying to make is that for many people being able to copy back and forth between a local folder and a mounted directory is no different than what they do everyday at work with networked folders. Many people are just moving the occasional document, picture, or folder. For those people Keybase could definitely work as a Dropbox replacement. I don't think the typical Dropbox user is expecting their ZSH profile to be omnipresent on their multiple computers/laptops/tablets.
You may be misunderstanding intent.
Also, to be clear, you could use the mounted files directly, but you just have to be aware that if you lose connectivity you may run into issues. If I was traveling somewhere and I'd like to work on a document in transit then I would recommend copying that to another folder on your local machine first.
Being on a NYC subway train is an even more interesting case, because depending on the precise client setup there's often intermittent or bad connectivity but rarely a good sustained connection between stations.
As in most of the world, smartphones are pervasive in both of these contexts.
Mobile and computer apps used to support these cases a lot better. As Bay Area connectivity has gotten better in those areas where well-off techies congregate (e.g. not underground Muni Metro), apps have gotten much worse at this except for apps targeting developing countries like India and Africa.
No, wait.
I want my computer to do scutwork for me instead because that's its job.
You're describing useful workarounds for the status quo when one can foresee dealing with these situations occasionally. Those are certainly good to document.
But they're workarounds and not true solutions, especially not for frequent needs.
Sorry for letting a rushed comment perpetuate the common Western stereotype of conflating all of Africa as if one single thing.
Long term I do still plan on moving to NextCloud, the core dev team from owncloud moved over and I've always been happy with OC, but I need the time to actually figure out why I'm getting sync errors with the suggested setup after following all the suggested fixes.
One of the machines even runs an old version found in Debian stable repos, but there has been no issues syncing with machines running newer versions.
Only downside for me is that there's no iOS client.