One of the things I do in our network is public drives. Every Linux system has a public incoming
which is mapped to the primary user of the device (if there is one, like for a laptop). And this incoming shared drive can be accessed without password.
This makes it really convenient to copy files around from one laptop/user to another, or from mobile devices to laptops and vice versa, or use the printer/scanner to send the scan job directly to the laptop of the user’s device. All in all, the users like this, and use it a lot. There is also minimal protection built-in, it will only work in our home network, access is blocked when the laptop is connected to a different network. But the folders are mostly empty anyway. For sharing files over the Internet we also have a Syncthing instance running, but that’s a different story, and not as easy to use.
One thing which I was annoyed about is that by default a Mac will try to connect as a registered user. There is an option Connect as Guest
, but it’s not pre-selected. Therefore every time I wanted to share something between Linux and Mac, I had to start Finder
, to to Go
and then Connect to Server
, then click on the server from the list of last entries, and then also click on Guest
. The built-in help is also not useful, as it only talks about “click on Guest”.