Linux-Windows file access

However, more and more people live in a networked world where they have a mixture of Linux and Windows systems available, and they would like to browse resources on all systems in the network.

While smbclient from Samba can provide that ability, it is a command line-oriented tool, and many people would like a GUI tool for browsing the network and looking at files on Windows systems. The KDE package Konqueror can do that, but it is based on a C++ library for accessing Windows and Samba systems. The library is no longer supported, which makes it hard for non-C++ programs to access Windows systems.

However, as I mentioned above, Caldera has funded the development of a new Samba client library, to be written in C. Once that library is released in final form (some code has already been released), developers should find it much easier to integrate access to Windows systems into their applications. The library will include a GTK+ test program that could serve as a starting point for developers who want access to Windows systems.

Finally, while it promises to get easier and easier to access Windows systems from Linux, and you can already access Linux systems from Windows, there will always be a need, by some people, to use the tools mentioned in this article.

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