I have a mac I use for some specific tasks. I’ll agree the Apple is, ehh, Apple.
But mounting network fileshares is dead simple. My SMB share pops right up, authentication works fine, the user interface for it is fine. If I wanted to use it remotely, I’d just export it over my tailnet.
’sshfs’ is good for short stints of brief use, but ultimately it breaks on a protocol level as soon as your socket dies, on any OS.
Both the default network mounting options in Gnome and KDE won’t let applications access the network drive. You have to mount using SMB4k or cifutils if you want application access. I’ve not used MacOS in over a decade but that functionality works seamlessly in windows for SMB shares. It’s honestly a minor reason (among others) I went back to windows.
Might be something polkit-related? But yeah, you are right about it not working.
The post refers SSHFS which is based upon FUSE, a very neat technology in the Linux kernel which allows a non-kernel develloper - says a python developer-to turn anything into a hierarchy of files and folders, that you can access and modify with your regular local applications. When I says anything, I’m dead serious, FUSE may turn the whole internet into a fake browsable tree of local files on your system. On windows, you have to write a fake disk driver to mimic a fraction of the feature. I don’t know ios but I guess Apple wouldn’t never allow such a wizardry by design.
Only tangentially related, since I don’t think NBD uses FUSE, but may I present Harder Drive
yeah!!!
There is a mac os port of fuse that works fine on intel macs, but requires a mighty amount of twiddling on apple silicon macs
I use both of these systems daily. They have some issues but are just fine for me. Honestly, they are just opposite extremes and I respect that. They each chose a side.
Whereas windows makes me scream. It’s absolute horseshit that pretends to claim some middle ground that makes no one happy.
Running both Linux and macOS on a daily basis… They’re both completely competent, and have basically the same amount of rough edges once you dig in and get your hands dirty. If you find one of them impossibly difficult, it’s a skill issue.
Yes. I run PopOS and Hackintosh on my Thinkpad, use the new M4 Mac Mini as my main desktop (with hopes of Asahi Linux support in the future), and run unRAID on my completely overpowered Ryzen 5900x NAS, where I have a Win10 LTSC VM for the rare occasion I need to run software that only runs on x86 Windows.
I would prefer to only use Linux if I could, but MacOS is very competent and far superior to Windows in my opinion. I have never had any issues accessing my unRAID shares on it
<rant>
Love how this meme once again shows a Linux terminal command (that only works on specific distros) instead of what most users would want (which would work on almost any user-friendly distro), the button in the File Manager to add the network share to your left sidebar.
Somehow people still believe CLI commands are superior, meanwhile people who just want to get Linux-unrelated shit done (that isn’t IT-related either) don’t understand what exactly happens here and won’t be able to permanently add the share to their file browser this way. Y’know, the way most people would use it in their daily workflow.
Where Apple fails in proper software integration, Linux fails in feature communication. Instead of properly integrating features (Apple) or providing/focusing on doing things intuitively and accessibly (Linux), both want the user to start thinking their way. And I fucking hate it, it prevents Linux from becoming more popular.
</rant>
You can click your way to the same feature in Nautilus. No need to even see a terminal.
Yeah. You also can edit mounts via GUI tools instead of manipulating fstab. You can configure shares without opening smb.conf. You can do all these things, now if we would just communicate how user-friendly a Linux distro can be that would be nice. Right now it’s still a wild goose chase to find instructions how to do things graphically and therefore accessibly and more safely, as every search first and foremost results in tons of (often time different) CLI commands. And there are too many in the community who counter with disabling or elitist bullshit, as if someone who isn’t into RTFM for every click somehow can’t be allowed to flip a switch. It’s exhausting to fight against these sentiments, especially now where apparently a lot of people suddenly realize that Microsoft and Apple might not be the best idea to trust. People who just want use and trust their computer.
Well, GUIs are even more distro-specific, so it’s either generalisability or user-friendliness. It doesn’t mean that guis don’t have the option.
My biggest problem with Linux is that there are 8 ways to solve any problem. Some of these are distro specific, and all of them are THE definitive way to do it depending on who you ask. This comes up for me most when I want to make a change to something or do it again on a new machine.
For adding another network drive, for example I think oh it’s called samba right and open the terminal and type in samba help. The response is: command not found do you want to install “samba-dc”? Okay so not samba. Oh that’s right I edited a file. Now was it smb.conf? No wait maybe it was fstab.
It is getting easier as I get more familiar, but I have to wrap my head around every new thing that I want to do. It’s no wonder people don’t have the patience.
That’s what you get for dabbling with computers. Of course there’s many ways to do one thing. There’s many ways to do one thing with Lego, for fucks sake. Do you really expect computers to be simpler?
I know this is just an example, but it is kind of funny.
User somehow sets up SMB shares on their network. Then is confused by the client?
How is
sshfs source target
distro-specific? That would work anywhere. What would confuse the user is GUI, because we have about 5 major DEs and 10 major file managers that usually don’t even work with sshfs without extra plugins.We also have ~5 major package managers (which all work differently) with usually 20 different package names depending on the repo, and you chose to ignore that part.
I ignore that part because it doesn’t pose a problem for the user. If you’re on a distro X, you know what command to type to install a package using its package manager. For the same reason, OP didn’t care to explain how to power on your computer. Or do you expect a meme to be a comprehensive guide on how to install sshfs on all major distros? Really? Maybe the real problem is that some people don’t understand what a meme is.
You clearly didn’t understand the point of my original rant. Also no, people don’t necessarily know how to use the package manager via CLI. Tools like Discover and Gnome Software exist for a reason, and people who feel more comfortable using them (instead of a CLI, which is a literal black box to common people) get harshly ignored by people who argue exactly like you. This is about accessibility, and these exact discussions are the reason I’m pissed.
Oh, I understand. I just don’t expect a meme to solve the accessibility issues. People do use the CLI, they find it convenient, and there is no reason why they can’t make a meme with terminal commands. What I don’t understand is why you act like Linux or OP owe you something. We already have macOS, which offers a fantastic user experience, and we have Windows, which provides some middle ground. Let Linux be Linux. You can also create ‘memes with more accessibility’ if that’s what you think the issue is.
Dude, I just ranted. I don’t expect this meme to do anything, neither does anyone owe me something. It just showed this general vibe in the community about what they think is “simple” I had the desire to call out here because I think it can be harmful to common users. So I engaged in discourse about this aspect. If you see it differently that’s fine, we probably won’t be friends. Outside of jokes (which I thought I made clear by specifically marking it as a rant) I will keep working on changing desktop’ Linux public image away from only-for-CLI-nerds towards a potentially user-friendly option for everyone (potentially = the distros made to be like that) even if you don’t like that.
Whatever you think you understand, it certainly isn’t my point. “Let Linux be Linux” makes me question whether you even understand how divers “Linux” is.
I’m not going to stop you. I just doubt that ranting under memes is going to leave a dent on the universe.
deleted by creator
Somehow people still believe CLI commands are superior
Something that only a pure enduser would say.
this meme once again shows a Linux terminal command (that only works on specific distros)
sshfs only works on certain distros? Oh you mean the apt install part.
the button in the File Manager to add the network share to your left sidebar.
I just browse to the network location I want and right click on the view in the file manager and select “add to places”. It will be there on the sidebar until I remove it. Yes it is there after a reboot.
But sshfs also works across the internet…quick and dirty file access from anywhere in the world. If you can SSH to a machine, you can get a mountable file system.
sshfs also works across the internet…quick and dirty file access from anywhere in the world.
I almost said that. It was my first thought. But then the people discussing it seemed kind of focused on local networks so…
Wouldn’t you just use AFS, CEPH, NFS, or 9p?
I really don’t want to be that guy, but isn’t SSHFS (FUSE) actually a terrible option when compared to an actual file-system? MacOS isn’t really missing out on much there.
The most painful part of MacOS (which makes it downright unbearable for me) is that system configuration files are XML. It’s an absolute nightmare.
SSHFS uses SFTP which is built into SSH, so no server to install. Its not as fast as NFS, but requires no setup. For something small like a home lab, that is a big advantage.
This. Surely not the fastest way to get content from/to a remote computer, but it just works as soon as you enable sshd.
SSHFS is very mature. I use it for administering several home servers.
It works so well that they added a mode where some users can have SFTP only access (without SSH shell) so you can set up shared directories. It was easier to set up (for me) than CIFS or NFS.
SSHFS is secure and works well over the internet. If you only want to access it over the LAN, then NFS is a much better option.
TIL about sshfs and life got a little bit nicer
Also Windows: “Ask your network administrator for access.”
Me: “Well I’m my own network administrator so what questions do you want me to ask myself”?
Windows: “Enter network username and password.”
Me: There is no network username or password. Sod it, I’ll bung them on an external disk.That’s a security quirk. Microsoft reeeeeally doesn’t want you to do anonymous SMB anymore, and with every version of Windows, Microsoft has made is more complicated to get it working like that. It’s probably still possible, but easier just to make a quick local user account and assign it read/write permissions to the share. Samba on Linux can still do it without as much fuss, but I’ve long since just accepted the extra step.
What’s the risk if done on local network?
Bad enterprise admins running companies without auth, MS getting the blame.
I have this problem with Android. Google has turned the filesystem into unusable garbage, so you’re lucky, if you can launch a gallery app with a file path and it allows you to actually go through the images in that folder.
And of course, that’s with a local file path, so the situation is completely hopeless when your images are on a network share. Unless the gallery app itself implements the network protocol, you’re out of luck.
Wanna guess how often that happens? Yeah, it simply doesn’t. Even if it’s theoretically just a library, when you build it into the gallery app, that dev has to continually maintain and test it.SSHFS actually works perfectly on android, just needs root. Here’s the app I use.
It’s funny how the README calls it a “VERY bad solution”, but so far it’s the only remote filesystem tool I’ve seen on android that could be described as anything close to usable.
Hmmm interesting. I’ve never had issues with that. I just mount it once to a mountpoint in my shared storage and it just works. Probably a ROM-specific thing.
@renzev for me, /mnt/runtime/default is not enough, because some apps using /mnt/runtime/read or /mnt/runtime/write as storage.
I love how android uses ext internally, but doesn’t support ext drives natively.
Windows: ☠️
I mean, if your server is using samba to share: net use * \homeserver\share {password} /user: {username} /persistent: yes /savecreds
Windows terminal commands are an abomination before the site of the LORD.
They were wise enough to include a mount alias though so if you pretend you’re on Linux it’ll work well enough.
No idea if it supports SMB or ssh though, but it works with NFS
mount -t nfs3 server:/srv/nfs/exporteddir E:
Mounts an NFS export to the E drive.
It’s pretty easy. Just right mouse click the network and Map Network Drive. Follow prompts. Success
@jaschen @SpaceNoodle or some unknown error only disappearing after reboot (especially with winsshfs/winfsp-like drivers)
Windows does not have native SSHFS support
It doesn’t need it. All NAS systems have samba on by default.
Not everything is prebuilt NAS.
>2025
>Not using Plan 9 for distributed computingISHYGDDT
I use distributed storage for all my files using pirate bay
So you’re storing your shit at my house?
And I am thankful
fun fact: Windows uses 9p for bridging the Windows and Linux filesystems with WSL2. the devs had excellent taste in protocols.
Used sshfs at work the other day for SFTP. Wanted to do a recursive search and it didn’t seem possible with filezilla on my Windows laptop. Started my Linux VM and sshfs followed by find/grep to get the info I needed.
I use nfs shares for this use case.
me too but the connection is tunneled in an ssh channel so it’s similar
NFS is insecure out of the box so typically tunnelled over TLS (not seen it done over SSH since why bother if there’s SFTP?).
I’d rather a desktop app or a terminal app for remote file systems than install a kext on a mac. Like, kicking stuff out of the kernel was an excellent idea.
FUSE would knock over my old mac anytime a transfer was longer than an hour or two. Not to mention the vulnerabilities poorly developed or maintained kexts introduce.
NFS over TLS exists, but typically you use kerberos for such deployments. Bit too much for home use though…
You’re not running an entire Active Directory domain in your home?
I’m a bit of a casual
<chuckles> We use dnf here.
<tips hat and runs>
You mean ‘tips fedora’?
would you believe me if I said I meant bowler cap? or maybe a top hat?
(and this is where I find out that Hannah Montana linux uses a top hat for a logo, lol)
dnf
users all wear Trilbies, call them Fedoras, and do not shave below the chin 😉And every Arch user wears a colander as a hat, calls them divine hollular shields and are completely nude below the waist.
Can you not just
brew install sshfs
on a mac? (Assuming you’ve already installed Homebrew).No, but you can do this:
brew install macfuse brew tap gromgit/homebrew-fuse brew install gromgit/fuse/sshfs