mfsbsd VS Samba

I'm very new to BSD in general, but I find it very fun and interesting!

However, I need pointers to get started.

> You won't be spoon-fed, and are expected to have read the manuals and other documentations...

I read a lot of FreeBSD and NetBSD documentation to get to the point of compiling my own kernels, but I don't think I ever read about the equivalent concept of Linux cpio/initramfs for BSD. My minimal images use a UFS filesystem.

Here, after checking https://mfsbsd.vx.sk/ and https://github.com/mmatuska/mfsbsd/blob/master/scripts/mdini... I think mfsbsd is just a using tmpfs so it may not exactly the same thing as initramfs, that allows booting linux from a bzImage + initrd

I'll keep searching, it's not super high priority at the moment, but it's something I'd like to do with (Free|Net)BSD.

I suspect it depends on how much support and/or hand-holding you need from your hosting provider. I'd hesitate to run an unofficial build/image but I believe the alternative on DO is to use mfsbsd (a memory-file-system installer for FreeBSD) which is also an unofficial build/image.

The common answer here is to use mfsbsd which puts all the installer's requirements onto a RAM disk so you should (in theory) be able to pull the install media and plug in other devices as needed

I looked into this for a project a couple of years ago and ended up using mfsbsd instead.

https://github.com/mmatuska/mfsbsd

Samba

The TLDR is that you create the filesystem on Linux/Raspberry Pi. Then you "export" that file system via some software to remote computers. You can use Samba (https://www.samba.org/) to create CIFS shares which can be mounted by either Linux or Microsoft Windows devices. There are of course other software/protocols you can use to export the filesystems like NFS, iSCSI, CEPHFS, etc; but these are a bit more complicated than what a novice can deploy. I would start with Samba/CIFS and then branch out once you get more experienced.

You could try to use samba via cgo.

I think you want a CIFS/SMB client? A quick search turned up smbc, which looks like it does what you want. All three crates are based on libsmbclient, which is a C implementation from the Samba project.

Remember kids, there is always Samba.

> First, the article doesn't say that "Linux is not ready for the desktop" - or concern itself with this as an abstract question.

Well, it does, but in a sarcastic manner:

"Yeah, let's consider Linux an OS ready for the desktop :-)."

> Also, I find the "GNU/Linux is already ready for the desktop; I and others use it" argument tired. I've used GNU/Linux for the desktop in 1998, but it sure as hell wasn't ready then.

Conversely, that it doesn't work for certain people does not mean that "it is not ready", which the post does state (sarcastically) as I pointed out above.

> Many use cases aside...

I'm not sure how the browsing, docs and email is miserable, maybe you can expand on that. The video editing is indeed a bit limited from my experience too. However, I don't think "limited proprietary options" is a problem. The community largely and specifically avoids proprietary software. Proprietary incursions into the community are generally seen as a negative thing. And for the lack of codecs, software patents for the most part are to blame.

And then it just comes to my original statement; many things stated in the article are non-issues to most Linux users or just falsehoods:

- Neither Mozilla Firefox nor Google Chrome use video decoding and output acceleration in Linux.

Firefox does.

- NVIDIA Optimus technology is a pain

NVIDIA is a pain.

- You don't play games, do you?

I do.

- Linux still has very few native AAA games.

So "it's not ready" because it doesn't have AAA games? What a pitty.

- To be fair you can now run thousands of Windows games through DirectX to Vulkan/OpenGL translation (Wine, Proton, Steam for Linux) but this incurs translation costs and decreases performance sometimes significantly.

No, not 'significantly' for dxvk.

- Also, anti-cheat protection usually doesn't work in Linux.

For good reason. Blame the dev, and don't make it work on Linux.

- Microsoft Office is not available for Linux

Thankfull.

- LibreOffice often has major troubles properly opening, rendering or saving documents created in Microsoft Office.

And whose fault is this? Use ODT.

- Several crucial Windows applications are not available under Linux.

Thankfully. Also, 'crucial' is subjective.

- In 2022 there's still no alternative to Windows Network File Sharing.

It's available since 1992: https://www.samba.org/

- Linux doesn't have a reliably working hassle-free fast native (directly mountable via the kernel; FUSE doesn't cut it) MTP implementation.

I can transfer files to my phone just fine.

- Too many things in Linux require manual configuration using text files.

No.

etc.

I have a media server that runs ubuntu, and today I wanted to copy some files off of it from my windows laptop. But the samba shares weren't showing up in file explorer (but they showed up on fine on my macbook).

brew info samba samba: stable 4.16.0 (bottled) SMB/CIFS file, print, and login server for UNIX https://www.samba.org/ Not installed From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/samba.rb License: GPL-3.0-or-later ==> Dependencies Build: [email protected] ✔ Required: gnutls ✘, krb5 ✔ ==> Caveats To avoid conflicting with macOS system binaries, some files were installed with non-standard name: - smbd: /usr/local/sbin/samba-dot-org-smbd - profiles: /usr/local/bin/samba-dot-org-profiles ==> Analytics install: 1,477 (30 days), 3,287 (90 days), 6,917 (365 days) install-on-request: 1,459 (30 days), 3,246 (90 days), 6,863 (365 days) build-error: 5 (30 days)