Comment 10 for bug 32067

This "need a GUI for smbpassword" problem was mentionned in Andew Thomas's review of Ubuntu on the British site "The Inquirer" a few days ago; the _apparent_ lack of interoperability with his Windos macines made him ditch Ubuntu sadly. I remember being extremely confused by this when first using Ubuntu as well, so this is might need more priority IMO. I don't think the fact that it's Vista and Samba having problems since those were fixed in January, but the smb-password no GUI problem. http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37742

"....But I wasn't installing it on a notebook, it's on a desktop machine sharing a LAN with two XP and one Vista boxes. Vista and XP play happily together, doing all the file and printer sharing I need with absolutely no bother. The Ubuntu PC is a different matter entirely. I was advised, by friends who swear by Linux and at Microsoft, that I needed to install Samba, which I duly did. I am assured that Samba's sole purpose in life is to enable Linux and Windows machines to co-exist and cooperate on the same LAN.

Well, I've only been playing with computers since 1972 and I couldn't make it work. Linux can see the Windows boxes and vice versa, but any attempt to access files is met with a login dialogue box that refuses any username and password I enter. Now my learned friends tell me I should be using something called Wine. I've been a heavy user of wine for many years and it certainly helped relax me but did absolutely nothing for my connectivity dilemma.

So I've done what any normal person would do in the circumstances – give up. If the awfully-clever people who write bits of open source code can't make it work automatically, I stand absolutely no chance of fixing it. It looks very much to me as if people clever enough to write an entire operating system can't make a simple bit of networking work, it has to be a deliberate marketing decision rather than a lack of ability."