Re: [tlug] Networking two Linux computers harder than Linux to Windows?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Dave M G writes:

 > What I want to be able to do is have a folder on her machine that I can 
 > copy files to. Maybe later I might want to do the reverse as well. But 
 > for now, just being able to drag and drop files over to her would be enough.
 > 
 > Which protocol is the most suitable for that?

As you'll see from the other replies, "it depends".

If (1) at least one machine is pretty much permanently attached to the
network and (2) at least one machine is mobile, and you might do
sharable work after going mobile, I'd like to drop Intermezzo[1] and
Coda[2] into the ring.  These are distributed file systems somewhat
like NFS, Samba, or AFS, but they are explicitly designed for
disconnected work.

However, for Coda (1) install and admin is noticably greater than for
NFS or Samba, (2) security is much lower than ssh unless you're
willing to set up Kerberos or a VPN, and (3) the file system semantics
are quite different from a normal Unix file system.  Specifically,
there is a hard limit on the size of a file that you can use (admin
configurable, but still a limit), and for large files, the first time
you open it it takes a very long time (== the time to transmit the
whole file over the network).  If your usage includes files bigger
than 100MB (eg, videos), it will probably be painful.[3]

I would guess similar considerations apply to Intermezzo, but I use
(and love!) only Coda.

[1] http://www.inter-mezzo.org/
[2] http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/
[3] It's not that you can avoid the transmission time by using a
different system, it's that the transmission occurs at very
inconvenient time in Coda---all at once, just as you want to work on
the file!