I replaced Google Drive with something most people never try

Ever since quietly dropping the “don’t be evil” company motto, I haven’t really been a huge fan of Google. Somewhere around 2022, I actually decided to drop the platform altogether. With Google Drive, I wasn’t really trying to make some anti-Google statement by looking for an alternative. I was just tired of treating it like a dumping ground for every document, backup folder, screenshot, and shared file out of habit.

So, I ended up moving more of that everyday storage into Yandex Disk. I already have a paid account, which I do want to mention upfront because I can’t pretend every single feature mentioned here is free. Yandex Disk still provides 5GB of storage for free, but it’s a far cry from Google Drive’s 15GB.

What interested me after making the move wasn’t the storage, but that Yandex Disk became a real Google Workspace alternative for Linux after I discovered just how full-featured it actually is. It gave me native Linux file sync, documents, mail, calendar, notes, a browser, and enough tools to essentially leave Google behind for good.

Yandex isn’t some tiny Google clone

It was doing search way before Google even launched

A lot of people online just describe Yandex as a “Russian copy of Google,” but it actually appeared on the scene before Google. The name Yandex came from “Yet Another iNDEXer” in the early 1990s, and Yandex launched its search engine a full year before Google did in 1998.

In 2026, Yandex now sits inside a huge ecosystem of apps:

• The Yandex search engine
• Yandex Browser
• Yandex Mail, Disk, Calendar, Documents, and Notes
• The video conferencing app Yandex Telemost
• Yandex Translate, Maps, Video, and Images
• Alice AI assistant and hybrid generative AI search
• Unified passkey application Yandex ID

As impressive as the array of applications is, it’s not completely flawless. Yandex Maps, for example, can be excellent in some regions, but in my experience, the detail and quality drop significantly when I move out of a major city. For traveling out into the countryside, I prefer using Google Maps alternatives like Sygic as a backup.

I got so much more than just cloud-based storage

Yandex Disk is far closer to Google Workspace than a Drive folder

Yandex Disk does a great job of storing and sharing files. That didn’t come as a big surprise as most cloud storage services already do that, and well. What surprised me was just how capable the surrounding Google Workspace-style features worked around it.

The Yandex ecosystem already has the useful things I need every single day, like email and calendar, cloud-based notes, and Telemost for video conferencing that replicates the features of Zoom Workspace. Yandex itself describes it as a virtual workspace, and that is actually a lot closer to how it actually feels when using it day-to-day.

But why does this matter when all I really needed was just file storage? Because replacing Google Drive is also replacing the workflows built around storage. Can I write a document? Can I make a quick note and attach it to a shared calendar? Can I share a file without having to invite someone to the platform? With Yandex Disk, yes, it was all possible. That’s because the documents and collaboration features of the Yandex ecosystem were built to work with Disk, and not just added as an afterthought.

Disk was the easiest part

Yandex gave my Linux desktop the cloud sync that Google Drive never could

Switching over from Google Drive to Yandex Disk was smooth and boring, which is exactly what I wanted from cloud-based storage. At home, the Yandex Disk application behaved the same as Google Drive for Desktop and Microsoft OneDrive Personal Cloud, meaning uploading files was as simple as copying over files and folders and letting it sync behind the scenes.

The biggest win, of course, was Linux. My Linux laptop is my main machine, and unbelievably, Google Drive still doesn’t have an official Linux sync client. OneDrive is also in the same position. Sure, you can use third-party tools. But paying for storage and then having to rely on dubious external software feels like a workaround when I just want native support.

Yandex Disk actually has a working official Linux client. It’s a set-and-forget console tool, so it’s nothing fancy, but this suits me just fine. The less bloat, the better. Setting it up was as easy as adding Yandex’s repo to APT and trusting its signing key before running the installer:

apt update
apt install yandex-disk

Then I just ran:

yandex-disk setup

The installation is straightforward. It asked me what directory I wanted to set up the synced folder, and I chose to install it in /mnt and changed the directory permissions with chmod to allow Read, Write, and Execute for the owner, and Read and Execute for group/others:

mkdir /mnt/YandexDisk
chmod 755 /mnt/YandexDisk
chown user:user /mnt/YandexDisk

The installer then asked me to log in to my Yandex account and gave me a unique code to prove ownership of the device.

Once configured, it synced immediately with the cloud storage files, which gave me a real cloud folder on my Linux desktop. I could also open and edit Yandex Documents like spreadsheets using my OnlyOffice application rather than a browser-based tool.

The catch is trust and compatibility

It’s powerful and works on Linux, but switching cloud storage is easy until other people are involved

For me, Yandex Disk worked even better than I could have hoped for, but it’s not a neutral drop-in replacement for Google Drive. The first big issue is trust. Yandex has a complicated corporate story as a primarily Russian technology company.

Some people and workplaces might prefer to keep their files inside familiar US or European providers. In the end, your data is at the mercy of whichever company you decide to trust with it, and some people prefer to ditch cloud storage platforms altogether in favor of self-hosted solutions like Nextcloud.

The other big catch is compatibility. Google Drive is considered the default for a lot of teams. I myself have had to spin up a Google account just to comply with job demands for a shared Drive document or Google Form.

Collaboration already works better with Google Workspace apps like Drive because most users already have an account, immediately recognize a Google Doc link, and trust it. Yandex Disk is great for my own personal files, notes, images, and backups, but I certainly don’t expect the rest of the world to stop using Google, nor trust a shared link sent from the platform.

So, I’m not recommending everyone to move their entire data collection to Disk overnight. But for personal storage and a workflow that doesn’t depend on Google even once, it was a decision I found easy to make and live with.

Why I still think it’s worth trying

Sometimes, the best alternative is the one that makes you question why you kept using the default for so long

I chose Yandex Disk in the end because it quietly handled my personal data storage requirements in the background, but also because it’s one of the few storage services that actually supports Linux.

Without a supported Linux sync client, Google Drive felt so awkward for so long on my main desktop. Having to manually upload and download files through the browser felt like manual work that Windows and macOS users never have to experience.

While my personal files now live happily on Yandex Disk, I did learn through the experience that I do need to keep my Google Drive account to keep collaborating with the rest of the world. It’s just that I’ll no longer be using it out of habit.