If the Germans Can't Do It, How About the French?

It took several tries before I got the download edition of French-built Mandrakelinux 10.1 running on my trusty Thinkpad. In the end, I came to realize that a nagging problem--the inability to suspend the machine--is kernel-related. When I boot 10.1 with the 2.6.3 kernel that shipped in 10.0, everything is fine. Boot with kernel 2.6.8, as supplied in 10.1, and power management is completely broken. For now I'm using the older kernel with no ill effects; and I'm hoping that whatever bug I've encountered is affecting others as well, so that a fix will be present in later kernels.

But we're not here to talk about kernels. We're here to talk desktops, and how they interact with the Windows-based world we live in. Mandrake has always offered its users the choice between Gnome and KDE. Though its primary emphasis is on KDE, I've been using Gnome on Mandrake for many years now; it tends to be solid and good-looking.

There is one little tweak you've got to make, though, if you want to see Gnome-specific icons in your start menu (such as the all-important "Browse Filesystem" and "Network Servers" entries):

1. Press Alt-F2, type menudrake and hit Enter.
2. In the resulting window, click the "Menu style" button. Select "Original menu" and click OK.
3. Select File, Save and then File, Quit.
4. Press Alt-F2, type killall gnome-panel and hit Enter.

But here's the terrible pity: On any Mandrake box I attached to PC World's Windows network, I was never able to see any network information in the Network Servers folder. This was a surprise, so I logged in to Mandrake's KDE 3.2.3 looking for an entry point to the network, as I had seen on my SuSE box. No such luck.

The only way I can find to interact with a Windows network on a Mandrake system is to use the Mandrakelinux Control Center to attach a specific network path to a local mount point: For instance, if you've got a file server named "pennylane" you can mount it at /mnt/pennylane and have that resource made available at boot time. But as for on-the-fly browsing of the network, as I had for one fleeting moment in SuSE (and as I enjoy every time I've got Xandros Desktop running), I can't seem to make that happen in Mandrake 10.1.

The Brits Fail, Too

I had the same problem with the initial release of Ubuntu Linux, which I mentioned briefly in my last column. Ubuntu is produced by a British outfit whose aim is to provide and support a version of the Debian project's distribution.

Ubuntu uses the new Debian installer. Like SuSE's YAST2, it's extremely flexible; but unlike YAST2, it runs in text mode. It gets the job done, certainly, but it looks like a throwback to 1986. Once you're through with that experience, what you've got is an extremely clean Gnome desktop (version 2.8.0) with nary a desktop icon in sight. Ubuntu has added a "Computer" menu to Gnome's top-of-screen menu bar; this menu contains entries for the drives and network servers that would otherwise live as icons on your desktop. This is an interesting approach, but I'm not sure what the intended usability gain is. I'd be happier with Ubuntu if its Gnome knew how to pull files off the Windows network I need it to talk to. So far, no luck.

Such difficulties are disappointing, but somehow not surprising: Xandros Desktop remains the sole Linux distribution that can be counted on to quickly and easily connect to and interact fully with any Windows network it encounters.

Is there hope on the horizon for Linux users who need to spend their days sharing data across a Windows network? There's a short-term answer, and a long-term answer: Luckily, they're both "yes."

Fail-Safe Samba-ing

First up is a solution you can use now that has worked for me on every Linux machine that has ever refused to Samba. XSMBrowser is a Free tool that interfaces directly with Samba's command-line tools to give you access to a Windows network. The tool is neither pretty nor terribly intuitive--it works sort of like an FTP client from hell--but unlike the Samba interfaces in Gnome and KDE, you can tell XSMBrowser exactly how to connect to the Windows network. The available configuration options are simple enough that even with trial and error you're likely to hit upon a magic combo in pretty short order.

Keep XSMBrowser in mind if you're hit with Samba woes. It's not a permanent solution, but it gets the job done in a pinch. And it's a heck of a lot better than slapping a file onto a floppy or a CD to feed to a machine that can access the network.

In the longer term, it's only a matter of time before one distribution or another takes a good hard look at this issue and follows in Xandros's footsteps, doing the work it takes to make a distro play nice with Windows right out of the box. Clearly it's possible to have a foolproof setup; the only mystery is why this isn't a higher priority for distributions that aren't Xandros.

Novell paid us a visit the other week, showing off not SuSE Linux, but Novell Linux Desktop 9.0. This new offering is the first Novell-branded distribution of Linux. It is based on SuSE 9.0, so its components are not quite as up-to-date as those in SuSE 9.2. But Novell has taken additional steps to ensure that Novell Linux Desktop is ready for certain niche markets, including businesses where Windows networks are likely already in place. My hunch is that Novell Linux Desktop is actually SuSE with some fine Ximian hacking applied to it, but I won't know for sure until I get a copy to play with. I'm just hoping against hope that some way, somehow, Novell Linux Desktop will know enough Windows networking lingo to let me access the network by the time my next column is due. Wouldn't that be nice?

Have you taken the Free Software plunge? Do you have Linux boxes and Windows boxes living together in harmony? Have a gripe or a success story to share? Send them in to PC World's Free Agent. Other thoughts relating to Linux and Open Source are welcome too, of course. Speak Freely!