*BSD News Article 52552


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From: gfm@werple.net.au (Graham Menhennitt)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: FreeBSD philosophy (was Linux Killer App (ksmbfs))
Date: 6 Oct 1995 02:31:26 GMT
Organization: werple public-access Internet, Melbourne
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Robert N Watson (rnw+@andrew.cmu.edu) wrote:
: Excerpts from netnews.comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc: 4-Oct-95 Re: Linux
: Killer App (ksmbfs) Larry Riedel@saturn.sdsu (826)


: > Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> wrote:
: > > If you want to write an SMBFS with the inherent limitations of
: > > a restricted model, feel free.  It would have less utility than

: > >                      Personally, I'd rather solve the problem
: > > than kludge around it; a planned kludge is not worthy of my efforts.

: > If there were a kludge that I could predictably use more
: > productively than the alternatives, I'd take the kludge.

: Personally I'd be very happy with a kludge for a one user login --
: handle it like the msdos mounting as it is now..  I use samba to serve

This is as much a philosophical question as anything. Is FreeBSD a single
user/desktop or a multi-user/server OS? Its hardware roots are the former
but its software comes from the latter. Linux is definitely oriented more
towards the former. For many people who run FreeBSD on a home computer, even
the Unix login is probably unnecessary. On the other hand, FreeBSD is being
used in a multi-user environment in commercial organisations. There should
probably be some way of setting up a machine in "home" mode or "work" mode.
In "home" mode, Terry's objections to SMBFS become superfluous. On the other
hand, you can't just throw away all security as people still connect their
home computers to the net. You do want to have restrictions on people
mounting drives from all around the world but this is more of a firewall
issue than a login one.

Graham