Are you saying you've found a way to remotely browse the filesystem of your Ubuntu box from within windows (without resorting to FTP?). As in, something that ties into windows explorer and lets you deal with remote files as though they were local?
If so, please point me to it.
But that's sort of the point I'm trying to make. If the Ubuntu team wants to get Windows devs to try out their thing, they need to make stuff like this completely painless. To the point of building a "Windows Kit" that you simply install at your end and it hooks you up with a complete set of tools you need to interact with your remote server.
Yes, it's called WinSCP: http://winscp.net/eng/index.php. It makes the remote filesystem appear as if it's just a local filesystem (if you choose the explorer interface type).
Look into filesystems over SSH. There are things like that for windows and they work okay (though what's wrong with using an FTP/SFTP client?)
I think you're missing the point that admining a Linux server is different. The complete set of tools you need to interact with a remote Linux server is: an SSH client.
I've used ubuntu on servers before and it is quite painless. You've inflicted a fair ammount of pain on yourself by running a graphical interface on a server.
As others have stated, spending 15 minutes learning about the linux commandline will save you a ton of time, effort, and pain.
The GUI was an attempt to alleviate the pain caused by years of having to poke at Linux boxes through a terminal. As far as I'm concerned, it's still orders of magnitude better than having to type out keyboard commands to navigate around the filesystem.
It's just a shame that the tools to do it remotely aren't up to scratch.
If so, please point me to it.
But that's sort of the point I'm trying to make. If the Ubuntu team wants to get Windows devs to try out their thing, they need to make stuff like this completely painless. To the point of building a "Windows Kit" that you simply install at your end and it hooks you up with a complete set of tools you need to interact with your remote server.