Before I begin listing off links, I feel the need to put a disclaimer. I realize that the title for this post will make many laugh. It makes me laugh. Why, after all, would you want to make Windows act like Linux when you can have the real deal for free? The answer is just that: Linux is not free, not in the modern sense. The switch from windows to linux is a shift in the way your world works. It’s often a shift for the better, but the shift itself almost always takes time — time to get used to a new ideology, time to figure things out, time to make things work just the way you want them to. Time that many people don’t have.

Truth is, there is simply no way to make Windows akin to Linux in any way, shape, or form. They are two different environments, two different philosophies. However, thanks to third-party developers and a fairly open distribution platform (I’m looking at you, Apple), it’s possible to bring some functionality to the Windows desktop. You can’t change its personality, but you can change its behavior. This list is meant to bring some linux-y goodness to those without the time to jump in head first.

Now, with that out of the way, the list:

• Clipboard history: something so small, so unnoticeable until you need it, and so nice to have when you do need it. ClipX; 131K download; 252K footprint (no plugins, 25 items, text only).
• Virtual desktops: Most linux distros come with virtual desktops or workspaces. Once you learn to work with them, you can’t work without them. VirtuaWin; 385K download; 1.3M footprint (four desktops). Won’t give you the Compiz cube, but you shouldn’t be expecting that anyways .
• Window snapping: a nice feature for those who like to work with non-maximized windows in the corners of their desktops. AllSnap; 69.4K download; just over 1M footprint (portable version via startup folder, desktop snapping only)
• Systray minimization: I got used to Amarok minimizing to the systray, and I wanted Windows Media Player to do the same. TrayIt!; 327K download; just over 1M footprint (one window rule for WMP).
• Launchy/Gnome-Do/Program Launcher: I never had much luck with launchy under linux, so I ended up using Gnome-Do for app launching. Win7, however, seems to do fine with its Start Menu searchbar. No download, native footprint.
• Wallpaper rotater: while not strictly functional, it is nice to be able to choose a number of images to auto-rotate through as a wallpaper. Win7 has this built in. No download, native footprint.

Moving from a well-established Linux environment to a squeaky-clean Windows environment is bound to be a bumpy experience without first determining suitable replacements for all the programs that one uses on a daily basis. After my initial move-in, I was rather ad-hoc in finding replacements. Now that I’ve found suitable replacements for my most-used programs, perhaps this list can help those of you looking to make n experimental switch.

• BitTorrent: I do a lot of torrenting, so a good replacement for KTorrent is necessary. uTorrent has so far served my purposes for the odd torrent, while I continue to use my automated torrent system on my home server for TV shows and such.
• IM client with AIM and IRC: I sit on IRC channels all day long these days, occasionally throwing in a word or two, but mainly gleaning whatever knowledge I can from the chatter. Also, I have an AIM account that is my main real-time online point-of-access. I’ve gotten used to Kopete, but it’s lacking in just the right areas so as to make me dissatisfied with it. Recently I’ve installed Pidgin (under Kubuntu), and I’ve found that it has its own quirks that I’m dissatisfied with, perhaps more so than with Kopete. The release of kDE4-only Kubuntu 8.10 has further disappointed me: Kopete lost its IRC capabilities, and I was forced to use Konversation for IRC, but it has been an exceptional IRC program. Here on Windows, the options are rather scarce — Pidgin is available, but suffers from the aforementioned shortcomings. I’ve heard great things about Digsby, but it doesn’t seem to support IRC at the moment. However, as I was forced to split my chatting between two programs on linux, doing the same on windows isn’t too bad a compromise. I use Digsby for AIM, and YChat, which seems to be a branch of XChat, for IRC. I am not completely satisfied with YChat as a Konversation replacement, because it has no auto-login, auto-identification, or auto-join features that work on Win7 (seems to be a dll issue here), but it works well enough.
• Desktop Feed Reader: My primary feed reader for feeds of interest to me is Google Reader, and that isn’t going to change. However, I also use a desktop feed reader to toss temporary feeds like ebay and craigslist search results into. On linux I’ve grown accustomed to using Akregator, simply because it’s included with Kubuntu. Here on Windows, however, FeedDemon has taken the role quite nicely.
• Music/Video playback, a la Amarok/Kaffeine: I love my music. And I love my video, whether it be downloaded TV shows or a DVD. And I have to have some way to play them. Regarding music, my needs are not outrageous — I just need some way to organize my music, fetch album info from the net, and perhaps display album art for me. I don’t care for song ratings or anything fancy like that. Windows Media Player works well in regards to both audio and video, and even works with my Inspiron’s front-side music player controls.
• Gimp or PhotoShop: Being in web development, I do occasionally do graphics editing. For this, I need Gimp at the least, though I would like to try PhotoShop. I’m going to attempt to install PS CS4 at some point, but I’m afraid I won’t have the free disk space for it. Bummer.
• Advanced text editor: On Kubuntu, I used Kate for text editing (HTML, CSS, PHP, etc files). My requirements here are syntax highlighting, tabs, and sessions. Code collapsing is a nice feature, but not required. I will likely use Notepad++ on Windows, though I haven’t done much development lately to really test its workflow yet.
• Firefox, Thunderbird, and Sunbird: I’m sorry, there is no replacement for these three .
• Office software: On Linux, I got by fine using OpenOffice. However, since I have free access to Office 2007, I am using that. Sorry, OSS radicals.
• Filezilla: Again, no replacement.
• PDF Viewer/Printer: Another thing that comes stock with Kubuntu. Foxit is good for PDF viewing, and CutePDF works for a printer.
• File manager: Requirements in this area include all the things I’ve come to expect from Konqueror: tabbed interface (with spring-loaded tabs, no less), session management, and easy switching amongst various folder views (icons, details, etc). CubicExplorer fits the bill quite nicely, though I still find myself opening Windows Explorer for short filemanaging stints.
• SSHfs: This was rather high on my priority list, as I have my web development folders, which reside on my server, mounted locally as SSHfs shares. This means that, whenever I have internet access, I can simply open, edit, and save the files at home as if they were on my local machine. Unfortunately, no SSHfs for Windows seems to exist. I had heard things about Novell’s netdrive.exe, but it doesn’t support sftp. Dokan’s SSHfs looked promising, but, alas, would not install on a Windows 7 environment (even in Vista compatibility mode). For now, I have to resort to WinSCP for SSH-based editing, but it doesn’t come near the convenience of SSHfs.

So I liked what I saw when I installed Windows 7 on VirtualBox. And I didn’t get to see Aero, and I kinda missed out on “testing” Vista, and I had an old XP install (which I never use anymore thanks to Kubuntu) taking 12GB of space. Can you really blame me for wanting to dive in?

Yes, I have installed Windows 7 (beta-build 7000) using an ISO I had gotten earlier off the torrents and one of the available activation keys. So I’m presumably set for now through August. (And if anyone’s wondering, the 7000 build ISO from the torrents and the 7000 build ISO from Microsoft have the same MD5 checksum — we checked).

The machine I installed on has a 60GB hard drive (of which Windows 7 has one 12GB partition to work with), 4GB of RAM (of which only 3.25 are available for 32-bit use, which is still nothing to sneeze at), and a 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo processor. 12GB was the smallest I could shrink my Windows XP partition after I had decided that I wouldn’t be using it anymore, so that’s the reason I have so little space. The installation took around 20 minutes from DVD boot to usable desktop, though I probably spent a good few hours hunting down program replacements. After the install, I was left with a paltry 1.27 GB to install programs on, or so the Disc Properties dialog told me.

After the install process, I was pleased to find that sound, battery life, and wifi all worked perfectly without any driver frustration caused to me. I was only a little confused when Windows asked about my “Location” when I first connected to a wifi network. Since the main two networks I connect to are secured networks, I simply chose “homegroup” as my location. And I’m still not sure what exactly the benefit of setting “Locations” up would be.

My Synaptic touchpad, however, was a bit trickier. While it did work after the install, the edge-scroll feature wouldn’t work. After some googling, I downloaded Synaptic’s driver for Vista, ran it in Vista compatibility mode, rebooted the computer, and enjoyed edge scrolling. Even after tweaking the settings, though, it’s not quite as sensitive as I’m used to under Linux, but it works well enough.

Another pleasant surprise is that no desktop icons are forced on the user. Normally, IE, My Computer, and usually a few other icons are irremovably (except through registry hacks, of course) placed on the user’s desktop. Here, however, there are NO compulsory icons — they can all be easily disabled through the Personalize section.

One unpleasant surprise I came across was that Windows 7 replaced Grub with its own bootloader. This was easily remedied by reinstalling grub.

Overall, it was a rather painless install process (dare I say easier than linux?). One thing I can say I will miss is the ability to search for and install programs from the linux repositories. There’s just something about “sudo aptitude install”-ing a program that trumps “google, download, install” any day.

The “machine” I’ve installed it on has a 10GB “dynamic disk” (which starts small and grows as is needed), and is limited to 512MB of RAM. Apparently Win7 is supposed to run on Vista’s requirements, which state 512MB, a 1GHz processor, and 15GB HD for the Home basic version, and it seems to do pretty well. According to the CPU/RAM desktop gadget, it rarely takes more than 60% of the RAM, and the initial install only took about 6GB of the HD. I haven’t gotten into any “intensive” usage of the system, but I have noticed some slight lag when moving the windows around after opening several programs. Speaking of windows, the first thing you may notice after the install is that Aero is disabled, presumably because VirtualBox doesn’t support hardware graphics.

If you’re experience with VirtualBox, you’re probably familiar with installing the VirtualBox Guest Additions, which allow “seamless mode”, automatic screen resolution update (when resizing the VBox window), and other nifty features. The unfortunate (though predictable) thing is that the Additions don’t support Win7 yet, so they won’t install. The extremely fortunate thing is that you can use the Additions ISO as a driver update disc to install specific drivers.

I say “extremely fortunate” because one thing that won’t work without the Additions is networking. And it’s impossible to get a resolution like 1440×900 without the VBox display adapter. To fix these issues, go to the “Devices” menu in the VirtualBox window, and choose “Install Guest Additions…”. VBox will mount the Additions ISO, Windows will ask if you want to auto-run, etc. If you choose to “run the program,” it’ll just give you an error saying that the OS is not supported.

Once you’re done trying to make it work the right way , go to the start menu, do a search for “device” (that search is a very handy feature!) and choose the Device Manager. Once there, you’ll want to update the drivers for the “Display adapter”, “Network adapter”, and any other devices that Windows didn’t recognize on install. To update the driver, right-click the offending device, choose “Update driver software”, select “Browse my computer for driver software”, and point it to the root of your disc drive (make sure “Include subfolders” is checked). The update wizard should automatically find the correct driver, if it exists. Once this is done for the network adapter, you should have internet access; for display adapters, you should have automatic resolution update (allowing 1440×900 resolution when fullscreen’d, etc). “Seamless” mode still won’t work, in case you were wondering.

A couple of other things I noticed: During the install, and even starting up normally, the VM experiences several “window resets”. I notice this because I run Compiz with the desktop cube plugin, and I normally have the VM loading on a side face of the cube; whenever it changes the “screen”, the window pops up on the active cube face. This happened several times during the install process (it even rebooted about halfway through, and finished the install from the files copied to the HD), and I believe it happens three times during bootup, though putting it into fullscreen mode keeps it from popping between cube faces.

Windows networking, for some reason or other, wouldn’t connect with \\vboxsvr (used for VBox shared folders). However, it was able to access the shared folders of other computers on the network just fine.

Audio does not work in the VM — I was unable to even “add new hardware” so as to install the driver form the Additions disc, as Windows insists on trying to auto-detect any new hardware.

As for the eye-candy, Aero is disabled, as is “aero peek”, Win7’s taskbar-preview. However, the desktop gadgets have support for opacity, so I don’t know what’s up there.

Overall and so far, it seems pretty nice, especially since I have 4GB (well, 3.2GB) of RAM and a 2GHz dual-core processor on my (physical) machine. In fact, I have a small partition that still houses an old Win XP installation — I may just wipe that clean (after backing it up, of course!) and attempt an install there, to see what this thing’s really capable of.

Update: Thanks to commenter Shinta for this tip: run the Guest Additions installer with the Vista compatibility option. This will allow the Additions to completely install, and seamless mode (probably among other features) will work.

Once you have the Additions ISO mounted, go to the disc’s contents in Windows Explorer. Right-click the appropriate installer (ending in either “amd64″ or “x86″) and select “Properties”. Under the “Compatibility” tab, check “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select “Windows Vista” from the dropdown. Click OK, then run the program. After the install, you will be prompted to reboot; after the reboot, seamless mode works .

Way back in 2004, my parents, like so many other consumers, ditched their old computer and bought a new one, a Systemax Venture with 512MB RAM (if I recall correctly — they upgraded to 2GB some time ago), a 2.5GHz processor, and a 50GB hard drive with a 10GB “recovery partition”.  In the five years that they’ve had it, I’ve been their tech support — which is probably the reason it’s lasted five years in the first place.  Those same five years were when I started growing excessively curious about computers, so it’s taken its share of poking and prodding (though probably not as much as my own machine, which ultimately got its drive split into several partitions and linux installed on it ).

After so much “experimentation”, it recently seemed to have given up.  It came down with a case of constant rebooting, a very common issue which happens when XP’s “automatic reboot-on-error” feature is enabled, and it throws fatal errors constantly.  What happens is an error is thrown, so it reboots.  But, of course, nothing was done to correct the error, so it is thrown again, causing a reboot.  Normally, we could get 15 minutes of uncertain “working state”, before the thing would either lock up (followed by us pressing the power button) or reboot itself, and that was when we were lucky.

A temporary fix that I found was to perform manual system restores on the hard drive, which involved hooking the drive up to another computer, going into the filesystem, and moving system files around.  It worked the first few times, but the main problem always came back after a while.

There were a couple of times when I suspected it might be an overheating problem.  I would boot into the bios and pull up the “PC Health Status” screen, which gave fan speeds and CPU temperature, and wait for it to lock up again.  I believe there was one time the temperature got above 200 degrees Fahrenheit, even.  With this revelation, we replaced the fan.  The replacement worked well, but, inevitably, other problems developed.

It started its constant reboot syndrome again, but this time even system restores wouldn’t work.  It got to the point where it was unusable, so in leu of unstable Windows, I burnt and booted an Ubuntu livecd.  Since there was hardly extra space on the original HD, they just ran off the livecd.  That worked for a while, allowing them the basic necessities of the internet (they had already been using FireFox at that point) and document editing (which documents they saved to a flash drive), until even Ubuntu started kernel-panicing, seemingly spontaneously.

It was at this point that they were ready to buy a new computer.  Not because they wanted a new computer.  Because they were sick of the old one not working, the common “excuse” to buy a new computer .

What about the “recovery partition”, you ask?  After all, surely the OEM put it there for a reason?  Well, I had come into posession of an older 60GB hard drive, and then I discovered dd, a linux “block copying” program.  Long before the machine became unusable, I used dd to clone the original 50GB drive to the 60GB drive, and ran the recovery program, just to see how it worked.  After the recovery program did its thing, I was asked to reboot.  Upon reboot … the OS wouldn’t boot.  Period.  Can you blame me for not wanting to try that on the <i>original</i> hard drive?

Fortunately, about December of 2007, I had discovered — and experimented with — partimage, a linux-based partition imager.  I had made backups of a few partitions from a few computers, and stored them on my external 500GB hard drive for future reference.  As luck would have it, one of those partitions was the main 40GB partition from this computer.  You can imagine my hope, curiosity, and anticipation when I (re)discovered this.

I promptly made two backups of the 40GB main partition on the drive — one partimage backup, and a complete file system copy to a folder on the external drive — and began the process of restoring the partition to its December 2007 state.

The restore was successful.  The computer booted fine, and here nearly a week later it still works great.  No more constant reboots.  There were a few minor issues — like account settings that were lost, and the fact that it had reverted to a pre-SP2 state — but the filesystem copy I had made contained any files they might want to retrieve.

The moral of this success story is the same as the moral of any “backup horror story” — backup, backup, backup!  You never know when you’ll lose data, your system will become unusable, or <a href=”http://lifehacker.com/5122848/hard-lessons-in-the-importance-of-backups-journalspace-wiped-out#viewcomments”>a paranoid employee will wipe all your hard drives clean</a>.  You just can’t know.

The horror part?  Well, my parents are still using Windows XP on that five-year-old computer.  I wasn’t quite able to convince them to use Ubuntu for everything .  Oh, well…

For example:

void blah(int width, int height) {
    unsigned char Array[height][width];
}

Seems logical, right? Create a new array, with whatever width and height were passed to the function. And, as I said, g++ will happily let you do this (well, maybe not this particular example, but you get the idea), but VS complains.

As such, and since I have to have a Windows binary to submit to the professor, I’ve ventured into the world of malloc. Sounds like a villain’s name, doesn’t it? For those who don’t know, malloc is (one of?) C’s memory allocation function(s) — give it the amount of memory you need, it’ll reserve that much memory and return the base address (in the form of a “void *”. pfft.). Of course, it’s not that simple, but that’s the basic idea.

To get our two-dimensional array with malloc, you need to get fancy with the looping. For example:

void blah(int width, int height) {
    unsigned char** Array = (unsigned char**)malloc(height*sizeof(unsigned char*));
    for (int i=0; i<height ; i++) {
        Array[i] = (unsigned char*)malloc(width*sizeof(unsigned char));
    }
}

What a freakin’ mess! Instead of reading “create a height-by-width array”, this reads more like “eat up as much memory as you can”. Yes, you have to semi-manually create each level of the “dynamic” array, all so you can conveniently use “Array[n][m]” later in your program. Want a three-dimensional array (used to hold RGB images — Array[height][width][3])?

void blah(int width, int height) {
    unsigned char*** Array = (unsigned char***)malloc(height*sizeof(unsigned char**));
    for (int i=0; i<height ; i++) {
        Array[i] = (unsigned char**)malloc(width*sizeof(unsigned char*));
        for (int j=0; j<width; j++) {
            Array[i][j] = (unsigned char*)malloc(3*sizeof(unsigned char));
        }
    }
}

And so on for each dimension you wish to add. Truly hideous. So many levels of pointers to keep track of, so many stinking loops! There is such a better way

Instead of using unsightly code to allow the convenience of multiple subscripts, you could just as well create a width*height(*3), single-dimensional array, and use some simple math to get the proper offset. Here are examples of up to three dimensions (I’ve actually used the three-dimension one in my program to load an image file, works perfectly):

// One dimension -- easy enough:
unsigned char* OneDim = (unsigned char*)malloc(width*sizeof(unsigned char));
for (int i=0; i<width ; i++) {
    OneDim[i];
}

// Two dimensions -- a little trickier:
unsigned char* TwoDim = (unsigned char*)malloc(width*height*sizeof(unsigned char));
for (int i=0; i<height; i++) {
    for (int j=0; j<width; j++) {
        // TwoDim[i][j] =
        TwoDim[i*width+j];
    }
}

// Three dimensions -- w00t, crazy!
unsigned char* ThreeDim = (unsigned char*)malloc(width*height*3*sizeof(unsigned char));
for (int i=0; i<height; i++) {
    for (int j=0; j<width; j++) {
        for (int k=0; k&lt;3; k++) {
            // ThreeDim[i][j][k] =
            ThreeDim[(i*width+j)*3+k];
        }
    }
}

If I’m not mistaken, the recursive pattern for the subscript is “(other-loops)*max+counter”, starting from the innermost loop. So three dimensions goes like this:

(other-loops)*3+k
((other-loops)*width+j)*3+k
(((other-loops)*height+i)*width+j)*3+k

no more loops, use "0":

(((0)*height+i)*width+j)*3+k
((i)*width+j)*3+k
(i*width+j)*3+k

So, for a fourth loop “m” going from 0 to, say, 40, we would probably have:

((i*width+j)*3+k)*40+m

And so on, but who uses 4D arrays, anyways?

Disclaimers:
“for (int i=0; …” syntax is, as far as I know, a C++ feature; in true C, you would have to declare “i” beforehand, then use it in the loop.
When creating objects with malloc, be sure to free the memory when you’re done with it; I refuse to be held responsible for memory leaks in your program.
C library “stdlib.h” must be included to use these functions.
Yes, you have to typecast malloc’s return value to whatever your data type is, unless your variable itself is a “void *”, but why would you need a pointer to nothing?
For each level of the array in the first malloc example, you need as many “*” as you have levels left to create — three for the first level, two for the next, one for the last, etc.
Strictly speaking, “sizeof(unsigned char)” translates to “1″, so it’s not necessary here; however, it is required to get the right size for other data types, in which case the hideous factor is no more reduced.
I have not tested, nor plan on testing, the four-dimensional subscript example given above. If it doesn’t work and you figure out how to make it work, feel free to post your solution

I successfully removed SP3 (after clearing yet more space – it needs 376MB just to uninstall!). Upon the mandatory reboot, I first attempted to login to my limited user account, only to find that it had the same problem initiating explorer.exe, so I assume that that problem was present before I installed SP3 in the first place.

I logged into my Root account (still SP2, mind you) and found that I could use my themes as I wished. So far, so good.

I then went to the Microsoft Update website, planning to download the update through that. As the “download” progressed, however, I decided it was going too slow and did some searching for alternative means of installation. I found the Network Installation, roughly 316MB. Click the download link, select “run”, and wait. When the download was completed, I went through the steps of installing SP3 and rebooted.

At this point, I didn’t even worry about my virtually lost Limited User account; best to just copy it to a new account and get rid of it. Logging back into my Root account, I was pleasantly greeted with the Silver Luna theme (I had switched to the default Luna theme and changed colors to silver before installing). I located and downloaded a UXTheme patch for SP3, applied it, rebooted (again!!), logged in, and checked out my theming capabilities. I was greeted with full theming glory.

So, one of the most common Windows Troubleshooting Tips fixed my issues: “If it’s messed up, reinstall.”

Now that that issue’s fixed — back to linux!!!

Since my switch to nearly-all-linux, I had shrunk my Windows partition down to the minimum to hold all the programs I had installed, the OS itself, and about 1 GB of free space. Seems my 1 GB had been reduced in my sparse Windows use; the SP3 download required roughly 370MB, and the installation another 370MB, and I had to find just a tad more free space.

After the install (and the ever-needed reboot), there were a couple major problems with my computer. Most major was the complete destruction of my theme capabilities. I’m quite fond of the infamous UXTheme hack; however, after applying the hack for SP3 (and probably before, but I’ll have to check), I could not use any UI themes, not even the default Luna theme. I kept getting an error that the theme couldn’t load because the file couldn’t load…

As tragic as it is that I could not use any window themes, at least I can still use the computer. Well, my Root account, anyway; my limited user account threw an error when I logged in saying that explorer.exe couldn’t initialize properly. Clicking the OK button continued the login process, only to login to a completely empty desktop. Explorer failed to load, which in turn kept the desktop, taskbar, etc from loading. I was able to pull up the Task Manager, but attempting to start Explorer.exe from the new task option threw the same error.
I was able to “work around” this major issue by creating a new limited user account (which logged in perfectly fine), but I ended up running out of space while attempting to copy the Docs & Settings directory from the old account to the new account.

Turns out SP3 is placed in the Add/Remove programs list. I’m going to uninstall SP3, check if any of these problems reoccur under SP2, then try re-installing SP3 and see if it works any better. Maybe I messed something up during the install. Or maybe SP3 isn’t ready for the masses yet.

Enter the GUI solution: system-config-samba. That’s the package name in the Ubuntu universe repositories, I don’t think the program itself has a proper name other than “Samba” (also check out the Fedora project wiki for the app). It’s a sparse little app that gives you GUI access to the settings of the smb.conf file. Once you get the behind-the-scenes details set, though, adding shared directories is a snap.

First make sure you have samba installed (package “samba” in Ubuntu repos). Next, install the samba config package – “sudo aptitude install system-config-samba”. The installation should put an entry called “Samba” in your Ubuntu menu (for me, using Kubuntu, it’s under “Settings”). If you can’t find it there, you can start it from a command line by running “system-config-samba &”. Before the program starts, it will ask for your administrative password (same as your sudo password, unless you’ve changed something around).

Once at the main window, You can begin to appreciate how simple SCS makes configuration, using three main buttons that are very self-explanatory, along with a simple list of currently shared directories.

Before you start sharing, you’ll want to setup the basic, general details. Open Preferences -> Server Settings. In the Basic tab, set your Workgroup (the default for Windows machines is usually “MSHOME” — make sure all your computers use the same workgroup name, to avoid issues) and the computer description. In the Security tab, you set the sharing settings. For my home network, which sits behind a router, I use the “Share” authentication mode and set the guest account to my account, to allow open access to my shared directories.

Once that’s done, click OK. The program may seem to hang for a second or two – this is just the program restarting the Samba daemon for you, and happens everytime you change the settings for Samba or for a share. Next, setup a new share.

I have a separate partition that contains all my music ripped from CDs. Within Kubuntu, I mount this partition as read-only, and remount it as read-write only when I need to modify the files (for example, add new rips or coverart). Here I’m sharing it to “everyone”, read-only, under the name “music”. Check out nixCraft for a quick rundown on Samba permissions.

If everything is right, you should now be able to access the Samba share from a Windows machine on the same network. I haven’t tried this method for accessing the share from a Mac, but presumably you can use the same methods you would use for accessing a Windows share.

Whatever the reason, I just thought I’d note that the famous March proverb seemed to apply to IE8, with about the same timing. Perhaps we’ll hear more about it (both bashing and praise) when it goes stable?