&gt; different filesystems<p>You&#x27;re looking at the wrong end of it. Dropbox doesn&#x27;t have to deal with any filesystem, Dropbox instead needs to build a filesystem.<p>It doesn&#x27;t have to deal with any filesystem because Linux abstracts it. The same abstraction allows it to build its own filesystem really, really easily. How easy? I wrote, mounted, and used a filesystem in less than fifteen minutes. In node.js. It&#x27;s that easy.<p>&gt; desktop environments<p>Dropbox doesn&#x27;t need to support various desktop environments, just a stable API for the desktop environments (actually, just file managers) to use. Isn&#x27;t this how Nautilus, Thunar, Dolphin et al. already support Dropbox&#x27;s existing features?