Networking, the nose-to-the-keyboard way

Let it be known that I love the idea of open-source software.  The idea of a community of folks working to make something we can all use for not an exorbitant amount of money (often, no money at all, except that you pay for power and transmission of data) is wonderful.  But it's also true that there are situations that arise out of that, where you get what you pay for.

Linux is great.  Particularly Ubuntu is coming along to near Mac-like user wonderfulness, without having to maintain the fanatical control of only running it on their own hardware.  Like the Mac and all other Linux releases, it provides access "under the hood" with the use of the Terminal.

Now, I'm not a computer science major.  But I started using computers when my grandfather handed me a TRS-80 he couldn't figure out, and I've been using Apple IIs and Macs essentially since they came out, PCs at various workplaces, and Linux as a hobby machine on and off for years.  I don't know *NIX commands like the back of my hand, but using the Terminal doesn't make me nervous in the slightest, as long as I can then see the results on the Desktop.

Now, there are one or two networking projects I've been trying to find a way to get done around the house, which have proved cumbersome on the Mac, apparently because they're features that Apple has decided they'd like to remove from their reasonably-priced client OS software, instead referring folks who know enough to want them to their still reasonably-priced, but more expensive Server OS software.  These used to be things you could tinker around in the Terminal to do, but Apple sort of paved over that option as they built their pretty Lion high-rise.

So I looked for 3rd-party programs to get done what Apple used to be flexible enough to let us all do, as long as we were willing to roll up our sleeves in the Terminal.  And most of those programs lost their ability to do what they did, with the Lion upgrade, because they used the same *NIX commands Terminal would have used, just with a prettier interface.

Therefore, I decided to look into Linux as a slightly less restricted way to accomplish my aims.  I didn't want to dual-boot my Mac or replace its OS completely, and I didn't want to leave a virtual machine running all the time, either.  So I needed some real hardware to run it on.  The cheaper, the better.  Free would be key.

On Mother's Day, of all days (a fact my new-mother-of-a-wife doesn't particularly enjoy), I found a discarded laptop literally sitting on a bench with a note that said "Works.  Runs Win7.  Free." taped to it.  It was a Dell with acracked plastic casing, a dead slide-in optical drive, and USB 1.1.  So no booting from a CD or flash drive.  Luckily, Windows 7 was on it and it did boot, though it didn't run particularly fast.  But hey, it was a single-processor 2.2GHz Pentium IV from 2002.  It was great that it was still running at all.

Dude, you're getting a free, limping but alive Dell.

I used Ubuntu's "wubi" installer to get Linux on there, and went on my way.  Worked pretty well, if with a small 5GB HD image, and slower than I might have expected.  Where were the old interface controls to get rid of shadows and antialiasing and all that?  Oh well.  It worked.

So off I tinkered in Terminal.  But then it started having trouble connecting to WiFi.  After a while it worked, if I gave it both a wired connection first, and several failed attempts to connect to WiFi, before it would work.  Windows had no such difficulty connecting to WiFi.  Hmm.  Well, that's OK: it was destined to work as a server, so I'd probably leave it plugged in to Ethernet almost all of the time, anyway.

Once I got my server all set up, it was off to the races.  I also got clients connected up nicely.  But they could only connect to the server; the server refused to actually serve them any data.  Useless.  And worse, while people were griping all over the forums about exactly the same problem, there was no solution listed anywhere.

So I gave up (on that purpose: the laptop is still sitting in a cabinet, much to my wife's chagrin.  But she won't see it until the next time I say, "Huh I wonder if I could…") on Linux, and went back to the Mac.  In the intervening time, someone had put together an app to let Lion do what previous versions had all been able to do.  Yay!  Better not to be running a whole other computer to do it, anyway.

Then, from work one day, I decided to use a different (virtualized) installation of Ubuntu to network into the Mac server.  Wouldn't connect.  Other clients had had no problem connecting at all, and getting the data they needed.  But this Ubuntu client wouldn't do it for love and your lack of having to pay money.

Once again, the forums were full of people with exactly the same issue.  But no answers.  One person who had posted this issue had lamented the fact that he wasn't getting any answers by going back on every few days and posting in the same thread, "Bump," then "Bump," again a few days later, eventually getting silly with "Bumpity!" and who knows (not a direct quote, but in the general vein of his commentary, "Who do I have to bump around here to get some answers?!?".

Nothin'.  So I love exploring on the Linux side of things.  But high entry fee or not, the necessity of having a third party go in and restore services they used to offer or not, I have to stay on the Mac side of things for the moment.

And don't get me started on what the record companies are making Apple do with iTunes (and what Apple themselves is doing with iTunes, making it the catchall for their digital media… It might as well be labeled, "iTunes, kitchen sink edition!".

Whups, I said not to get me started!