So far, all we have is Wireshark and a hot-rodded version thereof called Airpcap by Cace Technologies.  I'd love to see some of the vendors that we've been using for some time now (e.g. AirMagnet, Wildpackets, Tamosoft, AirDefense, Network Chemistry (now Aruba), and even Fluke Networks) come out with a made-for-Linux version of their laptop-based protocol analysis software.  Why?  Because I think that Microsoft is going to bite the dust with Vista.  I hate Vista, though I've always been a big fan of XP/sp2.  Everyone I know that has used Vista hates Vista - and complains constantly.  I'm reasonably sure that Vista even has a bad case of self-loathing.  With no reasonable path forward with the Windows operating system, that leaves us poor networking junkies with two equally scary choices:

MAC or Linux

I've spoken with some vendors who have said they are considering support for MAC OSX, but no one has publicly committed to that stance.  I have asked for a version that will work on Ubuntu Desktop Linux - my favorite Linux distro because it's just like Windows XP.  Sure, it's not quite as easy as Windows to use, but that's because I'm not quite used to its idiosyncrasies yet.  Given time, it'll be just as user-friendly - and still free.

While we're waiting on these vendors to pony up a committment to Linux, I'll be playing with Codeweavers software to see if I can get some of these Windows-based protocol analyzers working without having to install Windows.  It's a long-shot, but worth testing.  If you don't have anything better to do with your time, you might also test these to see what results you get.   Don't count on my Linux prowess, because I'm just not "there" yet with Linux.  If anyone else has already done this, I'd love to hear the outcomes.

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