OneDrive and Sharepoint on Linux in 2023

OneDrive, Sharepoint and Linux on the Desktop are more popular than ever. Despite that, Microsoft provides no first-party client to connect to their cloud storage on Linux. They probably never will. And that’s okay.

Thankfully there are options. They fall into two main categories

• Sync-style apps, where the all of your remote contents are first synced down and cached locally in a hot folder on your machine and uploaded when changes are made
• Drive-based apps, where the remote storage shows up like an external or network drive and the content is accessed on demand.

Sync-style options

There are a few quality open-source options that provide a sync style client, such as abraunegg’s command-line OneDrive client. This option can be pretty intimidating, depending on your level of comfort. You’re going to need to drop into the command-line and config files to get a consistent setup and read through some dense docs on the various options available.

Certainly not a bad option, and probably the go-to open-source option out there. But not for everyone. It also is a sync client, which means you’re going to be syncing down a lot of extra data you might not need.

While sync is nice, in that it merely looks like a local folder, if you have lots and lots of data or data you rarely use it can be a lot of wasted space.

Connecting as a network drive is the natural solution to this. You can access your entire library of remote files, edit them, upload and manage them – but you don’t need to spend time or free space by first pre-downloading them.

Mounted drive options

ExpanDrive is is a powerful OneDrive for Linux client that supports Ubuntu, Linux Mint, CentOS, Fedora, Redhat and most popular distributions. It supports two-way sync via a mounted drive to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and Sharepoint by securely connecting to the Microsoft Graph API.

Unlike other clients, ExpanDrive doesn’t pre-sync your data to a hot folder taking up time, disk space, and bandwidth downloading data you don’ need. It accesses OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and Sharepoint on-demand by only downloading the data you or your app asks for.

ExpanDrive runs on Ubuntu, Red Hat, Linux Mint, CentOS, Debian and most other popular distributions. We provide Deb and RPM based installers and have an integrated auto-updater to help you stay up to date. ExpanDrive connects to OneDrive, Sharepoint and OneDrive for Business as a fast network drive.

Installing ExpanDrive

Desktop based installations

ExpanDrive ships primarily as a desktop app with a user interface for advanced configuration and management. We also have a server edition that runs headless for Windows and Linux Servers.

Debian and Ubuntu based desktop distributions

For Debian and Ubuntu based distributions the easiest way to get started is to download and install the latest .deb package (64 bit), either through the graphical installer or via the command-line with the following command.

sudo apt install ./ExpanDrive_2023.4.1_amd64.deb

Installing the .deb will also automatically install the apt repository and code signing key to enable easy update using the system package manager.

You can install the repository and key manually with the following script

curl https://packages.expandrive.com/keys/expandrive.asc | gpg – dearmor > packages.expandrive.gpg
sudo install -o root -g root -m 644 packages.expandrive.gpg /usr/share/keyrings/
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/packages.expandrive.gpg] https://packages.expandrive.com/expandrive stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/expandrive.list'

Then you update the package cache and install ExpanDrive using:

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install expandrive

RHEL, Fedora, and CentOS based desktop distributions

Download our latest .rpm package (64-bit) and use yum to install ExpanDrive and the required dependencies.

sudo yum localinstall ./ExpanDrive-2023.4.1.x86_64.rpm

Installing the .rpm will also automatically configure the yum repository and code signing key to enable easy update using the system package manager.

You can install the yum repo manually using the following script:

sudo rpm – import https://packages.expandrive.com/keys/expandrive.asc
sudo sh -c 'echo -e "[expandrive]\nname=expandrive\nbaseurl=https://packages.expandrive.com/rpm\nenabled=1\ngpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://packages.expandrive.com/keys/expandrive.asc" > /etc/yum.repos.d/expandrive.repo'

Then update your package cache and install Expandrive using dnf (Fedora 22 and above):

sudo dnf check-update
sudo dnf install expandrive

or using yum

yum check-update
sudo yum install expandrive

Server/Headless Edition

Head over to our ExpanDrive Server Edition page for instructions and packages for Windows and Linux servers. ExpanDrive Server edition is designed to run unattended, at boot [versus login], and provides drives that can even be re-shared on the network.

We are currently in public beta testing for this server edition designed to run without any user interaction. If you’re interested in joining the beta, please send an email to support@expandrive.com letting us know which distro you’re running and what your rough use-case is.

Mount OneDrive or Sharepoint as a Drive on Linux

ExpanDrive is a OneDrive client that lets you connect your files using a fast network drive. Like Microsoft’s built-in client on Windows 11, everything is accessed on demand. You can browse and open any file from within your file manager or from the command-line. ExpanDrive builds native access to OneDrive into Linux.

Hello, Linux

ExpanDrive is currently shipping for Linux Desktop environments as well as a headless server edition.

• Ubuntu
• Linux Mint
• Fedora
• Centos
• Redhat
• Arch Linux
• OpenSUSE
• Debian

OneDrive Network Drive

ExpanDrive for Linux has a full featured file explorer as well as a fast network drive client. This builds support for OneDrive into every application in your environment, including terminal apps and the file explorer.