SAMBA digest 1426

[Graham Leggett]

samba at samba.anu.edu.au wrote:

> Samba, as we know, is wonderful.  I truly enjoyed my Sun PC/NFS
> disk/documentation bonfire.  I operate Samba on some Sparc 10's running
> Solaris 2.5 and 2.6, mixed in with Win/NT 4.0 servers at SP3.  Everybody
> (almost) at this site uses Win95 and WinNT PCs, but needs access to
> unix disk space for some other purposes.  Samba bridges that gap.  I guess
> I've been lucky, since I haven't had any major problems.

In contrast, samba for me has given me quite a few problems in
collaboration with the Win95/NT boxes we have here.

However, I have had absolutely no problems connecting samba between the
Linux and Solaris boxes that samba is installed on, and I have had an
equal number of problems getting the Win95 machines to see each other,
as a result I cannot blame samba.

> It is amazing how loosely federated groups spread out over the world,
> connected primarily by the internet, can manage to put together packages
> like Samba/XFree86/Linux/FreeBSD of such complexity, that provide such
> valuable service, that work so well, for virtually no money.

A number of years back I thought to myself that computers and software
would soon become so complicated that they would outgrow the intellect
of their masters, and as a result software would start falling to
pieces.

If one looks at the low level of software quality these days, it is my
view that this has already started to happen.

The small programming teams, combined with the pressure placed on them
by greedy masters trying to outwit the dirty business tactics of their
competitors have become incapable of keeping under control the projects
they are trying to run. Lack of good ideas and poor design and planning
keep the commercial software products so bugridden it makes them
unusable for mission critical applications, and as the computer becomes
more important in our everyday lives, "mission critical" is becoming a
greater requirement of today's software.

In contrast, "free" or colaborative software design pools the ideas and
talents of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people all over the
world. Poor design is not met with an ineffectual complaint to deaf
ears, it usually results in someone redoing it in a better way.

Having had extensive experience with Solaris and Windows 95/NT I can
honestly say that in any mission critical application, use free
software. With a Linux router (plus proxy plus realaudio server plus a
whole lot of other things) having the starting record here of 109 days
uptime (to be shut down for a hardware upgrade) and having the honor of
never experiencing an operating system crash ever in it's 12 months of
operation, I know what platform I am sticking to.

No other system comes close.

Regards,
Graham