Yesterday, I installed the “minimal version” of Manjaro Gnome that says “Minimal provides a basic desktop environment with no additional software packages pre-installed.”
If I run “Files”, click “Other Locations” and then start to type smb: in “Connect to Server”, the input text becomes red, and “Connect” does not get enabled. Typing other protocols like ftp:// does not show the same symptoms. I have tried manually installing “samba” and the “nautilus sharing” extension, but it did not fix the problem.
I probably need to install something that was not included in the “minimal” version, but I am not sure what. Files version 41.2, Gnome version 41.3. Everything is up to date.
The ID address had no effect. As I said, Files seemed to think that there is a problem with the smb protocol itself, because as soon as I typed smb:, the text became red.
Anyway, I clicked one of your links and found that it was using “gvfs-smb”. I checked it and it was not installed. I installed it and restarted Files; no change. I rebooted the system, and then smb worked. In short, I think this is all caused by the absence of “gvfs-smb” in the “minimal version”. I wish Files were a little bit smarter and told the user to install it (or automatically install it) instead of only turning the address red, when it could not use smb.