After switching to Linux, people who use Microsoft’s OneDrive for online storage may think that accessing their files on OneDrive would be an issue, because there is no official OneDrive client for Linux from Microsoft. While it is true that Microsoft has not developed a OneDrive client for Linux, all is not lost, because there are at least 3 community-developed and open source OneDrive clients for Linux that you can install and use.
Not every single one of them can claim feature parity with the Windows equivalent, but they work.
So without further ado, here are the 3 OneDrive clients for Linux in active development.
1. onedriver
onedriver is a native Linux filesystem for Microsoft OneDrive. Like onedrive (the 3rd OneDrive client for Linux in this list), it is strictly a client for Microsoft OneDrive, so it does not support any other online storage service. It has a command-line and an easy-to-use graphical interface.
Key features of onedriver includes on-demand file download, bidirectional sync, and offline use for already downloaded files.
If Microsoft OneDrive is the only online storage service you use and you want a no-frills command-line or graphical interface access to your files, onedriver is probably what you want to use, though it is not recommend if you’ll be working with large files in the GB range.
2. rclone
rclone is a command-line client that makes it possible to sync files on your local computer to about 70 online or cloud storage services. So it not only supports OneDrive, but also Google Drive, Amazon S3, iCould Drive, Zoho WorkDrive, etc. Though a command line client, it comes with an experimental graphical interface that you may launch from the command-line.
A more mature graphical interface that you may install is called rclone-browser. Both rclone and rclone-browser may be installed using your distro’s package manager, but to get the very latest version of rclone, it is recommended to download it from the project’s download page.
If you use multiple online storage services and frequently work with large files in the GB range, rclone is recommended.
3. onedrive
onedrive is a OneDrive client for Linux that works with OneDrive Personal, OneDrive for Business, OneDrive for Office365, and SharePoint Libraries. It also works with OneDrive national cloud deployments, including Microsoft Cloud for US Government, Microsoft Cloud Germany and Azure, and Office 365 operated by VNET in China.
While it supports most features you’ll need, onedrive lacks support for on-the-fly file encryption and decryption, and on-demand file download.
Like rclone, onedrive is a command-line client, but OneDriveGUI, from a different developer, provides a graphical interface for it.
By the way . . .
If you use Ubuntu or any distro based on it, or any distro with a GNOME flavor, and you have a Microsoft 365 account, you can connect to that Microsoft 365 account from the distro’s System Settings > Online Accounts > Microsoft 365 module and access any file you have in that account.
Figure 1: Ubuntu system Settings showing the Microsoft 365 account module.
