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Samba Wins eWeek & PC Magazine Award

Posted by timothy on from the infrastruction-and-stiflement dept.

frankie_guasch writes: "The award is "Innovation in Infrastructure" (i3) award for best Enterprise Software! And we beat out Sun Microsystems Java 2 Platform Standard Edition Version 1.4 and Bea Systems WebLogic Server 7.0 for the award, so I'm stunned that we won. These guys have marketing departments and a *budget.*" It's a strange contrast to the kind of attention that Samba is getting from Microsoft. (See these earlier posts for more on the CIFS situation.)

11 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Samba by kwishot · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Samba rocks.
    If only it wasn't so hard to configure shares... then again, maybe I'm just dumb, but it takes a lot of effort to set that stuff up.
    fp

    1. Re:Samba by InnereNacht · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I remember trying to configure samba about 3 years ago when I first started working with linux... Most of my pain was caused by trying to work with the shares as well.

      Nowadays theres so many howto's out, though. They made it a ton easier to get things done. Hell, I think you can even configure shares with SWAT now too which simplifies it even more.

      Kudos to the Samba team for a job well done!

    2. Re:Samba by DarkRabbit · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Samba has a web front-end that makes it all very easy! Just connect to http://localhost:901!

    3. Re:Samba by silicon_synapse · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Has anyone tried sharity? (http://www.obdev.at/products/sharity/index.html)? I got a license for it a while back but haven't gotten around to trying it.

    4. Re:Samba by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I've used sharity-light in FreeBSD. I don't claim to be an expert or anything, but it did its job well. Never had any problems with it...

  2. Quick answer to the CIFS problem by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 2, Interesting

    modularize Samba (it might be already, Ihave not looked) then make a module for supporting the CIFS and BSDL it. then add it to your GPL project.

    --



    I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
  3. Samba is awesome by TuxLuvr · · Score: 5, Interesting
    When trying to explain the Open Source philosophy to my wife, I used Samba as an example: I set up a file server for her office running Samba on FreeBSD 4.5.

    When I showed her the bill for hardware and software, I pointed out that the reason she now has a blazing fast server with great hardware, under budget, is that I opted not to install Windows 2000 Server.

    "So how can my Windows 2000 laptop running QuickBooks connect so seamlessly and without any crashes ever" (ok ok i'm paraphrasing..) she inquired.

    I proceeded to explain the magic of Samba, and the development model which made it possible....

    Thanks for great software! : - )

  4. Congrats, guys by GMFTatsujin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've got a teenie three-node network at home - two Windows computers and a Mandrake server. It's not much, but it gets me there. :)

    Samba is absolutely the most important service running on the server. It lets my wife and I share files, print whenever we like, and maintain private backups off of our computers. I'd put it down as the single most useful software package for anyone who wants to run a home network. It's the one we use most often and most transparently. Well, that and Squid...

    When Microsoft completely and irrevocably blocks out Samba, that's when Windows goes out the door forever. But seeing as how we haven't budged from 98SE since it came out, I don't know that's really going to be a problem.

    Smaba team, you folks rock my weird little computing world. Well done, and totally deserved.
    GMFTatsujin

  5. Re:A great counter-argument by RevAaron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Heh. Samba isn't an innovation. It is a typical case of "open source just copies the corporates." If it wasn't for "the corporates," there wouldn't be a need for Samba. Why would people be so hot about SMB compatibility if it weren't for MS's huge install base? They wouldn't be.

    As far as the Linux Virtual Server Project and Beowulf, sorry to rain on your parade, but clustering was around for a long time before that. They're awesome projects, that bring clustering to us for free, but they do do anything that's really new.

    We'll likely never see the same in the desktop market. Anything truly new innovative is usually dismissed, because it is different than the status quo. Joe Sixpack end-users don't want innovative, they want what they're used to. Which is why KDE and GNOME aim to be like Windows and to a lesser extent Mac OS. Again, this isn't a slam on them per se, they make Unix more accessible for a lot of people, but they are largely copies of old ideas. And that's fine. Because they make the old ideas Free and accessible, which is a good thing.

    There are already innovative things out there, like Squeak and Self which use the Morphic GUI framework. Most people, especially most "open source" developers, dismiss it, because it's not like everything else they've used before it.

    --

    Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
  6. MS questioned over CIFS license in antitrust trial by Andy+Tai · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is worth pointing out here that, as mentioned in the linked yahoo story (also appeaing in news.com), Microsoft's corporate vice president in charge of the innards of Windows, Rob Short, has been questioned over the CIFS license issue by the states' lawyers. It is interesting to see what kind of impact will the anti-GPL CIFS license have in the outcome of the trial.

    --
    Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
  7. Re:Duh by AJWM · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I shouldn't feed the troll, but...

    Windows supports most hardware

    Really? I've got this old SPARCStation that I just couldn't get Windows running on no how. Booted up and installed fine when I tried Linux (SuSE 7.3 SPARC).

    Ditto for a couple of old PPC Macs I have -- even though Win NT 4 claims to support PPC.

    Even on x86, I spend far more time futzing with the Windows machines than the Linux ones -- and time is money.

    Oh, and as for "you can find Windows admins dirt cheap" -- you get what you pay for. I'd sooner spend the money on an admin (whatever the OS) who knows what he's doing than spend the money on downtime, hacked sites and general cleanup after one of those "dirt cheap" ones.

    --
    -- Alastair