[tlug] ftp client for linux

[Brian Chandler <brian@example.com>]

First the meta-question: There has to be a better way. I spent a looong 
time googlehunting to try to find where to find the best way to find out 
how to get an ftp client running. The next thing is a programming 
editor: how should I _start_ this task?

Anyway, the question: I found gftp, which seems to be the most commonly 
mentioned ftp client, installed it in a flash, and tried using it.

Basically, it doesn't (in any reasonable sense) work. Yes, I have made 
several successful transfers, but in between it's crashed lots of times 
(at least I found out about xkill), lots of things just don't work (you 
hunt through the menus, as is the way with modern computing, find a 
button called "Stop transfer", but as far as I could tell it had no 
effect at all).

Annoyances:

I'm trying to use SSH, because I understand that is secure where the 
basic FTP protocol isn't, and gftp has an option for SSH2, but I have to 
reselect it every time I connect (which was a lot of times).

File dates are in the Completely Insane Jumble format, with the day of 
the week at one end and the year at the other, and lots of stuff of 
varying significance in random order in between.

Summary:

I'm not very impressed. I notice some people said "It works OK for me", 
others said "It crashes all the time", so I suppose I'm the wrong sort 
of people. I do like the fairly uncomplicated layout - I simply need to 
be able to transfer blocks of files, mostly Up, and I'm not looking for 
fancy terminal emulators or any of the other stuff that some "FTP 
clients" seem to boast.

I'm currently using xubuntu, but I will probably try gnome next <g>.

Any suggestions?