Some Comments on Samba

Update July 2009: Kubuntu 8.10 and Samba

First Note. Samba is intended to be installed on one machine that will act as a file server. A file server of course is a computer whose sole purpose is to keep files that people want or need to share.

Kubuntu comes with a built-in Samba client that enables it to read and write to shared folders.

But on many cases today where Linux is being pushed as a Desktop OS (Operating System) this scenario would not work. Because people would want to share files on their own computer without going to a dedicated file server.

In this case, you have to install the whole Samba package (client and server) on the machine.

Second Note, only the administrator can set the folder sharing feature. If you're the only one using the workstation and you have administrator privilege, this would not be a problem. But if another user is using the workstation and they don't have administrator privilege, this would be difficult and time consuming for the administrator. Because they would have to call the administrator everytime they want to make changes to their folder settings.

A good way to tackle this would be for the administrator to predesignate a folder where users could drop files they want to share.

So far we have just tackled sharing files from Linux to Windows and Linux to Linux.

On the next post we will talk about sharing files from Windows to Linux.