“If you were to try and pick one (only one!) specific cool thing
about Linux, you might have to say “networking”. And I might just
have to agree with you. Nothing networks like Linux and what is
networking about, really, but sharing. Nice segueway, huh? Linux
lets you share a single, dial-up (or cable) modem connection for
all the PCs in your house. It lets you share printers. It also lets
you do the kind of sharing that drove local area network
development to the state that it’s in today. That kind of sharing
is “file sharing.”
“Now, as flexible as Linux is, you’ll soon discover that there
are dozens of different ways to share files across a network. We
can choose from NFS, SAMBA, CODA, AFS, and others. When all that
fails, there’s always sneaker net. Understanding what they do, how
they do it, where they are now and where they are going is the
first step in deciding what makes sense for you. So…I’d like to
start this discussion with NFS, the great Grand Daddy (or Grand
Mama–who knows for sure?) of network file sharing utilities. Born
when the 80s were still young, this child of Sun Microsystems is
ubiquitous on just about every Linux or UNIX distribution you can
think of. NFS stands for “Network File System”, and you can even
get it for that other OS, which makes it an ideal first choice for
exploration of file sharing.”
“Like almosteverything in the world of Linux, NFS is still
evolving, and different incarnations exist on different releases.
Nevertheless, NFS has been around a long time, and while it has
problems (which we will discuss later), it is a good, stable
file-sharing mechanism and worth a look. On most machines, the
Linux implementation of NFS is sitting around version 2. The
version 3 NFS, which includes improved performance, better file
locking and other goodies is still in development and requires that
your kernel level be at 2.2.18 or higher (although there are
patches for other levels). Curious about your kernel
version?…”