Windows networking - what it should have been

[Fornhamfred]

Hi Oceanwatcher

Very interesting post- with some very valid points.

Without going into the detail it may be of interest to you that pyNeighborhood is available in synaptic.

[solar1951]

Hi Oceanwatcher,
I am new at all this samba stuff myself and I could be wrong but I beleive the smbfs package is needed so that you can mount windows and other Linux shared folders on your machine acting as a server. If the other machines are turned on and running when you boot up your server then those machines will find your server and they will appear when you click on "Network" from the Mint menu. However if your server is running and then a machine on your network is booted up it will not show up. For this you will need something like pyNeighborhood - or smb4k if you use KDE - to actually scan the network, find the machines in your workgroup and then you can mount them. You will need to create a folder, preferably in your /home folder in which to mount these shares - I use a folder called Network

I have used pyNeighborhood from the repos and it is easy to use and I agree with you that it should be included in the next release as part of the default.

There have been many posts about samba and AvanceIT seems a knowledgeable board poster.

[subslug]

First I'll have to agree about the default network names, I posted the same thing on here before about having it named MSHOME instead of WORKGROUP like it seems it should be.

Anyway another method to get access to your Win shares is after you install Samba and get it running just open a terminal and run "smbclient -L windowsPC" where windowsPC is an actual computer on your network.
Unless you've given your shares a password just hit enter, otherwise give the password
Then when it lists all the shared folders on that computer open Nautilus and in the url bar type out the location you want to reach... smb://windowsPC/sharedfolder
It should connect and give you a shortcut on your desktop.

[Fornhamfred]

Hi Oceanwatcher

My setup is two machines one running various linux distros and the other Win XP. I am pretty sure that when I set up my wired network in Mint it was the easiest of all distros that I have used. Having shared my Mint folders, changed the workgroup name to agree with Windows and made sure that the folder sharing service was ticked, Mint immediately found the windows workgroup through network and after asking for my user name and password I was able to share all the XP files. On the Mint machine is a FAT32 partition for general storage and this needed changes to my fstab file to get access to it from Windows otherwise everything was very simple and unlike other distros Mint does not seem to suffer from intermittant connections thro Samba. Also in XP whereas the displaying of my network places was very slow when using other distros and once the Linux shares were selected going back to the previous page showing all network shares was very slow, with Mint in use it is lightning fast. I cannot explain this but assume it is Samba related.

[Fornhamfred]

Mint Elyssa (5)

[solarbear]

I'd like to add my two cents in here by saying I completely agree with oceanwatcher. With all the talk about making linux a viable alternative to windows, I would assume that that the ability to access windows shares EASILY would be built into most linux distributions. I have been playing around with many linux distros for the past few years but have not made the final jump yet. This is because as a windows IT I absolutely need a way to access and even manipulate my windows machines from linux. I have always found it quite a task to configure any linux distribution to access windows shares. I really really wish there was an integrated GUI to make this simpler. It shouldn't take me hours of research to perform a task like that? I know the linux community can do better. Keeping my hopes high and my fingers crossed. I want to believe...

[Fornhamfred]

Do you have static IP addresses?

[Fornhamfred]

I cannot see the advantage of not having the Mint PC on a static IP address. Have you tried it ?

[Fred]

This is an interesting thread with lots of good observations. There is a simple solution to the whole issue however. Don't use Windows computers in your network and you won't need to jump through hoops to interface with them.

Flame away... lol

Enjoy life,

Fred

[qbicdesign]

I cannot see the advantage of not having the Mint PC on a static IP address. Have you tried it ?

because (in the spirit of this thread) you don't have to set static ip on windows, so you shouldn't have to in Linux either.

[qbicdesign]

Less trouble with drivers. So far I have only had one thing to fiddle with a little, the graphics card. Apart from that, there has been nothing. And this is a world apart from the other two major OS'es.

I have to agree whole-heartedly. I remember my first experiments with Linux back in about '96 i really wanted it to be good, and windows to suck - but drivers was where Linux always was way behind.
Times thankfully have changed, and now I get no driver problems at all, no matter what hardware i'm installing on. The same cannot be said for Windows.
Linux has overtaken Windows in this (and many other) department(s). Its only brand new hardware where there could be problems and IMO that's short-sighted policy from the manufacturers if they don't provide Linux drivers.

[msuggs]

Linux is a great example of unlimited potential and creativity producing something special. In many ways it represents the way our society is changing as a whole. Without all the different flavours and development Linux would not be what it is today. It. would be a sad day if Linux simplified itself to the level proposed above.

Over the years I've torn my hair out just as much as the next person trying to get certain bits of hardware working and solving peculiar little bugs. That said though Linux is now in a pretty nice place in terms of overall hardware support and features at the moment. A comparison of a raw Linux install and a Windows one shows just how superior it has become. Out of the box there is no comparison. On many a windows box you couldn't even connect to the net or have proper sound and graphics without installing add-on software and drivers. Not a simple process for a newb at all.

There are distros out there that claim to make life really simple, gui based and windows like. It's just a matter of finding the right one

[garda]

Oceanwatcher,

I have to say we share the same perspective. I too put Linux (especially Linux Mint) in such a high esteem that I've been recommending it to many of my friends and families. Heck, I've even given away installation discs and helped many of them with installing it free of charge. But there are just too many technical difficulties with Linux that keep them from loving it, especially in areas such as hardware compatibility and ease of use. People who already have Windows preinstalled on their machines can generally just slap Linux on them in dual-boot configuration, and try to get it up and running and learn living their lives there during their spare time. That's no big problem. But installing Linux on virgin machines is, of course, a lot different story - too much time has to be spent just to get it well on its feet before it can be used for general computing. I'm just one of those lucky users who happen to own a fairly Linux-friendly machine and a couple of spare boxes, so I don't have much to complain about.

Another area Linux still has much to improve in is power management. I've installed Mint (and a few other distros) on some laptops and found it draining the battery very quickly, which is of course a significant hindrance towards the concept of mobile computing. And that's still not to mention some other problems such as hibernate and suspend not working properly, insanely high disk activity, etc. So those are my two cents. I do hope Linux could be the first choice OS someday, not merely an alternative.

[qbicdesign]

Linux is a great example of unlimited potential and creativity producing something special. In many ways it represents the way our society is changing as a whole. Without all the different flavours and development Linux would not be what it is today. It. would be a sad day if Linux simplified itself to the level proposed above......
There are distros out there that claim to make life really simple, gui based and windows like. It's just a matter of finding the right one

I'd say Linux is a great example of unfulfilled potential. It has the potential to kick Windows completely out of the market (which i think everyone except Microsoft wants to see happen) and its had that potential for 10 years or so already.
I think the suggestion is not that "Linux" is simplified, but rather that at least one (... just one! ) distro (Mint) gets the recipe right for the user migrating from Windows. The word "claim" in your last sentence is the key. I have researched well over 20 different distros in order to find something i can use as a viable Windows replacement in a Windows Active Directory corporate environment. All of the distros failed to deliver the basic functionality which XP offers in some way or other, some in such a crippling manner that excluded them completely from consideration. Mint is the closest i have come to success, and so far its taken me a solid week (7hrs a day) to research and configure it do all that an XP pro install can do (XP pro install i can do from scratch within about 2hrs including all needed software), and there's still things which are at best clunky, i had to use command line, and I'm still not happy to let any of my users loose on Mint while these problems exist.

So I'm 99% behind Oceanwatcher on this one.

[qbicdesign]

....Another area Linux still has much to improve in is power management. I've installed Mint (and a few other distros) on some laptops and found it draining the battery very quickly, which is of course a significant hindrance towards the concept of mobile computing. And that's still not to mention some other problems such as hibernate and suspend not working properly, insanely high disk activity, etc. So those are my two cents. I do hope Linux could be the first choice OS someday, not merely an alternative.

wow - i thought i was the only one with power issues - my battery drains in about half the time it does in XP, hibernate doesn't work when i close the lid (even though its configured to), sometimes when i shutdown i get a black screen but power stays on etc. etc. The only thing i really loved in Mint was being told that my battery was performing at only 45% of what it should, and that caused me to research reconditioning it, and i managed to get about 55% out of it now.

[qbicdesign]

shouldn't this thread really be named "What Mint should be" ?

[qbicdesign]

ok great, i love it when a plan comes together....

[msuggs]

... so far its taken me a solid week (7hrs a day) to research and configure it do all that an XP pro install can do

Me thinks you are using the wrong OS. If you want Mint to be just like XP then use it instead. XP works just like XP should. Mint works just like Linux should. Linux is just a different way of doing things.

[qbicdesign]

damn.... why is no-one is looking at the big picture?
Linux is capable of all the things XP can do, people have spent valuable time writing the apps to do all of that, but no-one seems to be putting it all together into one package.
it drives my nuts, that people don't realise how important it is.
XP is the wrong OS, anything Microsoft is the wrong OS.
I don't want it to do everything XP can, but i do expect Linux to be able to communicate effectively in a windows domain (or workgroup) without too much trouble.
Mac can do it, so Linux should be able to - without CLI, and without having to research what addons are needed to achieve that. I shouldn't need to add anything.

[qbicdesign]

Listen, i know all that stuff, thats why i'm hanging around in forums and googling stuff, and all i'm saying is that for a Mint newbie (NOT a Linux newbie - i used only KDE before) it took me IRO a week solid (including all research into what apps to use and bug workarounds) to do the following (and a bunch of other stuff which i don't remember now), which I'm guessing that most Linuxites haven't even attempted:

• Installed and configured NTP to synch with domain controller
• Joined Mint to an Windows SBS2003 active directory domain, and authenticating users against AD. - Likewise Open
• Found workaround for fact that the workgroup name doesn't change to that of the domain you just joined - silly bug
• Found workaround for latest Nautilus silly bug that doesn't show folder shares on workgroup computers
• added, configured and printed to network printers
• Installed and configured Evolution with exchange plugin, so i can use it as a total replacement for Outlook with exchange server.
• Installed terminal services client so i can remote onto windows 2003 servers.

In summary, and in answer to the "Me thinks you are using the wrong OS" type comments, I'm sorry to tell you that its almost entirely bugs, not a lack of Linux features or apps, which have made this way harder than it should be. If those bugs can be ironed out then there's no reason why i (or anyone else) shouldn't use Mint as a replacement for XP in a Windows domain.