You could probably do this with FUSE. Guess nobody cared to make that yet.
Comment on Nextcloud/OneDrive Files-only Replacement
Dave@lemmy.nz 2 days agoOn Windows, Nextcloud seems to tap into some Windows function to provide files on demand. Is there any Linux cloud file service that can do it?
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 days ago
rimu@piefed.social 2 days ago
It exists and I’ve tried it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davfs2
Thing is, when an app thinks a directory is on a local disk, it does things which do not scale well over a network. e.g. reading every file in the directory to make thumbnails.
Kynn@jlai.lu 2 days ago
Seafile has fuse for accessing it as a folder.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 days ago
Nextcloud implements webdav, which you can use rclone to mount as a remote
Dave@lemmy.nz 2 days ago
In my experience it’s not quite the same. Using webdav through the distro account seems that it’s fully online. And folder access or file access contacts the server.
The virtual file experience is more of a hybrid. All the folders actually exist on disk, as well as shells for every file. If you try to open a virtual file, in the background Windows will seamlessly download it for you. At that point the file is actually on your disk. This way regularly accessed files on on your hard drive and seldom accessed ones are not, saving local hard drive space while providing an experience almost like if all the files were actually on your drive.