Re: [SLUG] Simple Conceptual SMB/SAMBA Question

[Jeff Waugh <jdub@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<quote who="Tom">

> Just wanted to make sure I understand the concept of SAMBA/SMB correctly.
> From all the recent posts, it appears to me that SMB is a bizarre,
> unwieldy, complex, archaic, difficult, and fragile way for one windoze
> computer to share/access the file system on a different windoze computer.
> Is this correct?

Other posters have answered this as if you were asking if *SAMBA* were all
of these things. SMB is indeed a very weird protocol when you come from *nix
land, however SAMBA makes its use sane.

> Or, is the SMB problem inseparable from the windoze problem? 
> 
> When people come up with problems with SAMBA, I'd like the first
> troubleshooting question to be "Can you get away with not using SAMBA?",
> as it would be a great way to transition toward Linux.

Unfortunately, you're optimising this answer for people who are interested
in the Linux side of things. SAMBA is for people who aren't necessarily
designed for them.

If you used a non-SMB/CIFS based protocol for file sharing with Windows
machines, you'd lose a lot of the "Windows-ness" of how it works on the
client end. Which, despite our perspective on what is good and what is not,
would be bad for users.

- Jeff

-- 
    Snow Crash was a terrible book: Superheroes wear their underpants on    
           the outside, not for two weeks without changing them.