Connecting Windows and Linux

Connections between these two operating systems are almost as simple as those described in the previous section. The steps that need to be taken are exactly the same. However, there are two pitfalls that you must avoid, and both of the pitfalls are connected to transferring files from Windows to Linux (or back).

File Exchange between Windows and Linux

On Linux, remote command execution and data exchange through the SSH is the standard. SSH also uses OpenSSL for encryption, like OpenVPN. Windows, however, has no built-in support for encrypted data exchange.

Windows systems use the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol to communicate and exchange data. Linux has no native support for this, but there is a powerful server suite called Samba, which can be used to make Linux machines appear like Windows PCs (and even integrate them into Active Directory domains).

So how do we copy the key file from a Windows machine to a Linux server? There are two possibilities. Either...