Originally I had PortableApp installed to my Google Drive account. Everything worked but it was sooo sluggish to launch PA applications and my PC seemed to take longer to idle down after a restart. The worse offending thing seemed to be running web browsers from cloud. Google Drive was constantly uploading temp files from the web browers (google/firefox/opera) as I used them. This not only slowed down my network but I constantly had to purge my GD trashcan of these files.
I finally decided to pull PA from GD and run it on a network share. It works... for the most part. I discovered all the Chromium based browsers won't work correctly from a network location with the --no sandbox parameter added. I use Offline Sync on the client machine so PA apps can function with the host machine is done. It only occasionally behaves wonky.
Back to online cloud behavior. Is this sluggishness a problem specific to Google Drive? Has anyone tried PA with other online services and got better performance? Have you noticed similar behavior running web browsers from an online service? Separate question. Is it possible to redirect the temp files for specific apps or move those apps out of the PA directory so they aren't synced with an online directory?
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To clarify: Your browser is not (directly) running from the cloud. It's running from your local computer while synching every modified file. So, sometimes it may take a long time to edit (replace) modified files here and there.
Chromium browsers over time are getting worse, becoming huge (and other issues) especially if we do not clear their history.
I've used Firefox & Dropbox a long time ago. It was nice. but when it's about to reinstall my OS, a nightmare! several duplicated (conflictual) files that I had to 'clean' manually. Google drive was not allowing me to easily edit/delete my local files, so I did not use it.
TLDR; It has some advantages, but it's not the best choice.
'Joy is ephemeral, live it before realizing the truth'
― Neo Buddha ―