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I'll cut in rudely with my own reply. Sharing files is unbelievably inconvenient. Sharing files to my mum in the other room involves copying files to a USB dri
by brendyn 9y ago
I'll cut in rudely with my own reply.
Sharing files is unbelievably inconvenient. Sharing files to my mum in the other room involves copying files to a USB drive and moving them manually, after I reformat a USB to ntfs or fat32. It doesn't matter that both of our computers are on a LAN because by default we have no pre-existing convenient ways to share files. With her being on Windows and me being on GNU/Linux, I'm not even sure which program I would pick if I could install one. For anyone that isn't in USB drive proximity, I have to brainstorm a solution every single time I want to share a file for every person I want to give it too. This is all despite the fact that theoretically, there are a million different ways that we could share a file.
- lsadam0 9y agoThere are numerous better options than a usb drive: Email, cloud storage, almost any messaging client, etc.
- nradov 9y agoYes well that's kind of the problem isn't it? Too many options and no default cross-platform standard.
- 2muchcoffeeman 9y agoMost alternatives are really inadequate, especially for large files. When you are in the same room or even city, I should be able to just move large amounts of data from one computer to a physically adjacent computer without having to go through the internet. For long distance transfers, I agree with various cloud storage. Upload some files and create a share link. But even this is an annoyance for a large file.
- lsadam0 9y agoAirDrop on Mac solves this problem. But how do you propose getting Microsoft and Apple to implement a cross platform standard when they have financial incentive to not do so? Cloud storage is the best answer, even though it is an extra technically unnecessary step for local transfer. That said, Even my 60+ technically illiterate mother can do it reliably. I think this is an excellent example of letting “perfect be the enemy of good enough”.
- Thlom 9y agoAirDrop is brilliant. I shared 10 pictures with my mother with one click. She accepted with one click and the pictures were instantly available on her iPhone, iPad, mac and Apple TV. the only problem I have with it is that it can take a few seconds before nearby devices shows up on the sharing screen.
- starsinspace 9y agoBut isn't it a bit sad to send files to some cloud-storage or email server farm, probably half-way around the world, just to share between machines which are on the very same LAN?
- Animats 9y agoYou can share directories between Windows and Linux. The Ubuntu machine I'm typing on has a folder shared with the Windows 7 machine next to it. You can set this up entirely from the GUI. It's called "Samba" on Linux.
- slrz 9y agoFor these cases, I use a trivial program I wrote myself that just serves a specified directory over HTTP, optionally with basic auth. Most home routers have dynamic DNS updates enabled, so the only instruction for the other side is "put $hostname into your browser window", sometimes followed by a "prefix it with http://" http://" if their browser insists on searching Google for that name. It requires some effort and knowledge on my side but tends to work pretty well for the other person. Even better when you have some instant messaging channel available where you can just send a direct link.
- Izkata 9y agoI mean, if you have python installed, no need to write your own: python -mSimpleHTTPServer ..serves the current directory on port 8000.