Ubuntu and Windows File Sharing Options

I had earlier written about my renewed experiment with Ubuntu 14.04 and was eager to explore some more. Not being comfortable with Samba File Sharing between Windows and Linux (my earlier experience way back in 2007 was not too good), I thought I'd explore another option which worked between Windows and my Mac -- OneDrive. So I fired up Ubuntu and Firefox and did a search for OneDrive for Ubuntu. I was somewhat confused when I realized that no such result (at least not the results I was looking for) materialized.

I did some more digging and discovered that -- while there had earlier been a file-sharing program called Ubuntu One, this was now discontinued.

The reason, apparently, alleged by many websites -- one of which is this one -- "increased competition from" some of the "leading" cloud storage service people. I thought this extremely sad. That a service being offered to a relatively small OS user-community should be pushed out of existence by larger corporations seemed to me to be a tad unfair.

Why can't each OS allow users to read and save files where they like? I know both Ubuntu and Mac OSes can read Windows' files and copy these to wherever they like. Windows, however, firmly ignores the Ubuntu partition as though it is not there.

Hold on, though. I thought I remembered that OneDrive offered file-access anywhere. Should that not include the Linux community, I wondered? Investigating further, I logged onto the OneDrive site and, sure enough, it did mention access "from any PC, Mac or phone."

But, when I clicked on through to the Download section, guess what? There was no Linux option anywhere! Hmmm... Well I guess it is their prerogative, but I still feel it is unfair to the relatively smaller Linux community. I know Ubuntu does offer another Cloud option but I'm reluctant to add one more username/password to my already full list.

Meanwhile, OneDrive works comfortably on my MBP and I still have about 29GB of free space to play around with, should I ever need it.