Samba is ruining Linux

[cat-21]

I have been working with SuSE for a couple of months now and from my standpoint I feel Linux's weakness is in a network/domain environment. My problem with Linux is having it connect to Windows Machines or other on my Network. While it can view the domains and computers it can never attach to them. I know this is samba's problem and not SuSE's so I don't blame them. Basically samba.org has got to get their stuff together as they seem to be the weak link in the Linux puzzle. I feel SuSE should take over and build this thing right as samba obviously can't. If you google around practically every distro is suffering from one of two errors in network related function and it's samba-related.

1. Unknown error condition in stat : Network is unreachable

2. The process for the smb://(machine name) protocol died unexpectedly

There was over 10,000 references to these errors and pages and pages of people complaining over these problems with either fixes that didn't work or no fix and them stating they've abandoned their testing and are moving on to other tasks. In most cases these people gave up on it and wen't back to Windows. So in a nutshell samba is killing future Linux customers due to there disenchantment and turning them back to Windows. When I saw the SuSE distro I was very impressed with their accomplishments. They have a very polished and professional distro. Just like so many other people who saw Linux, they were sold until samba screwed SuSE by creating sub-par networking. Samba's the weak link in the Linux puzzle, if SuSE was smart they would dump them for good and go in-house before they ruin their future customer base.

I work in IT and alot of people would love to get heavier into Linux in general. Basically all of their biggest gripes are over networking problems. People who need domain functionality would have totally abandoned Linux if it hadn't been for smb4k giving the fix they needed unlike Samba, so you have them to thank for keeping a small number of companies from totally scrapping the Linux game entirely for another 5 years which is what Linux doesn't need right now.

[jeremy1701]

Excellent points. Feel free to join to Samba development team.

Jeremy

[adrenaline]

My problem with Linux is having it connect to Windows Machines or other on my Network. While it can view the domains and computers it can never attach to them.

Can you elaborate on this? I have a domain at work and I have samba running in RH 9.0 I trades files back and fourth and as long as the usernames and passwords are the same on the domain as no the samba machine it integrates nicely and none of my users even know its a Linux box.

The RH machine is an internal ftp and file server.

Mike