The Linux backup tool nobody talks about—and why it beats every official sync app
The Linux backup tool nobody talks about—and why it beats every official sync app
Publish Date: 2026-04-01 11:31:00
Source Domain: www.howtogeek.com
Typically, when you’re uploading a file to the cloud, you need to open your browser, log into your account, navigate to the right folder, click the upload button, locate your files or folders in the file picker window, and then hit upload. What if you could just type one line into a terminal, hit enter, and be done? The open-source tool rclone lets you do just that.
What is rclone, and why should you switch?
It’s far more efficient and lightweight
You might be asking why anyone should choose a command-line tool for managing their cloud storage. I can give you three reasons.
The first and obvious one being that you can run it in a headless environment and still push and pull your files. It’s perfect if you’re running a homelab, and you need to move files to or from your servers.
Second, I hate Google Drive and OneDrive websites. Any file manager, whether in the cloud or offline, needs to have tree navigation. Both Google Drive and OneDrive lack it, so you have to use the search bar to find your files, unless you already remember their location (Dropbox is better in that regard). If you find their UIs annoying too, give rclone a try. It even has tree navigation.
Third, Google Drive and OneDrive don’t offer desktop clients for Linux. Even their Windows versions are resource hogs because they constantly run in the background. Compared to that, rclone is a CLI tool which only runs when you call…
