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How Do Your Machines Talk to Each Other?

Posted by Cliff on from the chatter-in-a-room-full-of-differing-dialects dept.

VonGuard asks: "I'd imagine this is a common scenario out there for Slashdot readers: I have multiple desktops, all sitting right next to each other and all running different OS's. Linux, Mac OS X and 9, Windows 98, and XP. The problem is, despite these machines being only inches arpart physically, in the digital world, they are miles apart. I have no single way to get them all to talk to each other. NFS is impossibly complex, Appletalk is unreliable thanks to netatalk, while PCMacLan, and Samba make me feel like I'm giving into the Empire. Isn't there a simpler way to get files from one of these machines to the other? Right now, I use webservers and write little HTML files that link to the files on each machine. Isn't there a better way to do this?" Is there really a network sharing standard that works across a number of operating systems aside from Samba? Truth be told, Samba "works-for-me", so that's what I us. However, when it comes to simple file copying, sometimes a simple scp is all I need. What protocols do you use in networks that consist of 3 or more operating systems?

3 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. rsync by swdunlop · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In my home, there are three laptops that regularly wander in and out of the network, running FreeBSD / Windows 2000, Mac OS X and Mac OS X; I want them to have common access to my projects, and my mp3s. My central file server has an sshd, so I simply use rsync to keep them all in sync with one another. It is a bit wasteful, if all of my machines stayed on the network 24/7, but I and my wife do a lot of travelling.

    --
    Weapons of Mass Analysis
  2. You've already given in by Jahf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Face it, you're trying to network 2 MS OSes with 3 non-MS OSes. You want to fileshare between them without "giving in" but you're keeping the non-MS OSes.

    Samba is nothing to be ashamed of. I know plenty of folks who use it with no MS OSes in the mix at all.

    You seem to know it is probably going to be the simplest solution ... yet you exclude it off-hand? Sounds like an exercise in frustration to me.

    --
    It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
  3. The Obvious(?) Answer: P2P by Whizzmo2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How hard would it be to install a gnutella client on your Windows, Mac, and *nix boxen?

    You know, for an ostensibly geeky audience, this one should have been near the top of the list of responses.