Can Ubuntu Do This?

[simonlang]

network shares in windows? i remember this back in my windows 98/me/2000 time and it was basically always one of the bigger tragedies i encountered. very soon after i got a new pc i gave my old one to my sister and soon ennough we had something close to an internet flatrate, so i read about this nice feature called internet connection sharing. after half a day i had it working. but just. now after nearly every update something broke and i had to reestablish the connection.

similar stuff annoyed me till today, sharing stuff between a win7 notebook and a winxp (or 7 i dont know anymore) pc via wlan was annoying as hell.

 

generally i made the best experience with network shares if both systems have exactly the same windows version running, exactly the same updates installed, and so on....

 

out of windows world since years, but do they now have at least made it possible that you can still have a firewall running and do network sharing? opening only a few ports never worked for me with older windows. once it broke the internet connection itself.

 

now i never tried to exchange anything between linux because these days dropbox does the job for me, but knowing the rest of linux i would not be surprised by a bit if also that would be much easier, faster, better and less problematic than with windows.

 

drivers? you must be joking! sure, out of those 1000000s pc worldwide you will find 1 or 2 where windows installs all drivers and linux none, but in 99,9% of the cases linux brings the drivers, and with windows you have at least to install 7 or 8 drivers thats a fact.

i remember when it needed not only a sata driver, but a mainboard driver and something in between, the graphics driver, the network driver, the bluetooth driver (so i had to use a corded usb mouse temporarly), and wasnt there something with nvidia chipset where you even had to look for the order you installed these drivers, otherwise the system bluescreened?!

 

best example i always bring: a typical linux installation is like: insert dvd or usb, it boots the system, you click on ok/forward 3 times installation starts, in the meantime you open up a webbrowser and enjoy your time. after installation is done, it reboots - once. you immediately have the webcam working and can shoot a pic for your useraccount.

 

typical windows installation: none! you have it preinstalled with all that crapware and spyware and demoware and after 2 days you think you need more ram and a faster comp because its so slow. so you insert the dvd you bought for a lot of money and install the system. in the meantime you are forced to just look at the progress bar because thats all you can do. or you read that small worthless booklet which used to come with windows vista dvd. when installation is done, you reboot. now it gets funny. you have a wrong screen resolution, and lots of yellow ! or ? in the device manager. either you insert now the driver cd you got with which includes outdated drivers, or you look on the manufactor homepage for newer drivers.  downloading them can be a challenge, as there is a good possibility that neither wlan nor default network chip/card works.

now you spend at least 2 hours of running between a 2nd pc where you download the drivers for the first one to install the drivers.

as soon as the computer is online, this can be between the driver installation as well, windows will annoy you with updates it needs to download and install.

at this point count on at least 3 probably more reboots, and more installations before shutdown or before login.

depending on the security structure and the current viruses/trojans out there, you by now might even have already got a virus. (less likely with newer windows versions however).

now even the most minimalist pc users will need: an office package (buy it, or download and install a free office), a basic paint program (download or buy), a file archiver (download or buy), you will need an antivirus for windows and you better download and install this the very first.... forgotten? ooops... by now you might have a virus or your default browser ie has now 2 or 3 of those nice toolbars.

 

with linux you have all this included and the time the windows user is still restoring his backed up datas or messing up with program installations (missing dll?? oops google,  missing .net package? oops, google... )  you have everything working, backed up the complete system, and it just never annoys you.

 

to come back on the post OP

 

 

yes you can. and you probably should and for sure, if using windows long ennough will be forced to do so anyway. either directly with ubuntu or one of those ubuntu/linux based rescue and backup disks.

 

can ubuntu fix windows infected brains? probably not.... or not fast.... it takes a long time. i used windows from 1995 till 2009. ubuntu and other linux distros from 2009 till 2014.  thats 14 years against 5 years. i know about the virtual desktops in linux since the beginning. i knew about the various clipboard managers since the beginning. i tried both out and found it convincing. however integrating this stuff into daily work was not easy. i started using virtual desktops in a productive way only 3 months back!!! and only a few days ago for the first time i made use of the clipboard manager, instead of going back a window/tab and marking and copying the text again.

i blame this on windows and the way i learnd and had to work with the stuff windows offered and had to work arround so many things windows lacked.....