Before I ask my question, an impassioned plea. Please don't let this devolve into a "use the command-line or GTFO" flamewar. Yes, I know about scp and friends.
I have a VPS running Ubuntu and I'd like to mount one of its filesystems on my Mac so I can use all my local tools and copy files via finder, etc.
I'm using Fuse/MacFusion now, and it's particularly slow.
Any better way?
Best Answer
First, set up a VPN connection between the VPS and your Mac. Something like OpenVPN is fine (the TunnelBlick Mac client works well, at least up through Snow Leopard).
Second, set up the VPS as an AFP server using the "netatalk" package. Something like
sudo apt-get install netatalk. AFP is the native Mac network filesystem. Configure it to your situation.At this point, you can establish the VPN connection between the VPS and the Mac, and then find and mount the AFP volumes from the VPS in your Finder.
An alternative would be to use something like MacFUSE and SSHFS, but using AFP is more "native" and will show up better in Finder.