Hello, Manjaro!
I tried Fedora 38 and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed out of pure curiosity. On both of these distros SAMBA works out-of-the-box. I just don’t have to do anything, it just works, and I can see my Windows PC in my home network, and I can start moving files between Linux and Windows at once. Why cannot I do the same in Manjaro? Why shall I perform some shaman dance to setup SAMBA on Manjaro? I think, SAMBA, WIFI, WIFI-Printers and other wifi-connected devices shall be found configured automatically, without the necessity of deep knowledge of Linux on the part of the user.
Oh, Child.
If you think It’s a shaman dance now, you’ve obviously not worked with it 10+ years ago…you’d have thought that was pure black magic…
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Setting up SAMBA shouldn’t require deep knowledge at all; just, enough knowledge to enable you to install any packages needed, and to make configuration changes where necessary.
Even our friends in Redmond don’t ship their flagship OS with networking fully operational by default; even Internet is not available until after certain security issues have been addressed. You have to configure specific settings for SMB to work.
Likwise, in Linux, there are security implications to consider.
This page should give you all the information you need. Cheers.
Additionally:- There is a Manjaro-specific manjaro-settings-samba package which (at first glance) doesn’t seem to be mentioned in that tutorial. This package provides easier smb-password functionality; See Using Samba in your File Manager for more information.
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I know about Windows and a local network connection adventures. But why do Fedora and OpenSUSE have SAMBA ready to work out of the box? And yes, SAMBA works on my Manjaro. I set it up.
Because all distributions do things differently. That’s just the way things are. Arch, so Manjaro, is a much more hands on, involved system than many other distributions. It’s easier, but not at all no-brain-usable. More:
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My point, exactly, you set it up; it didn’t just magically work. You have to put the work in, as we all did – Read and Learn – There are no reliable “copy/paste, step-by-step” easy guides for dummies. If there were, we’d probably be using them ourselves; and freely give them to you.
I guess I have been going about it all wrong.I have been using Fedora since 2003 and have never installed a version that did not need to be set up to run samba and share files with windows.Setting it up in Manjaro was no harder than any other distribution but I did have to check the wiki as Arch is a bit different in the way it’s set up.
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As far as i know (have not checked), the client part is already there by default.
For the server part there are 2 solid arguments: first, security. Every server running is a potential problem. Secondly, most of the userbase does not need it at all and thus for the 10% that actually use it it will just take space and memory on 100% of the computers. Not nice.
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I’m not sure that is accurate, though it might be; I simply can’t remember whether it was installed by default, or not, in Manjaro.
Many times I’ve noticed an apparent lack of distinction between samba and smb-client; and it’s an important one. As you indicated, there is no overwhelmingly great need for samba unless having a server is the intended goal.
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It is, because it’s a dependency of a number of packages that do come installed by default, among which mplayer and kio-extras (if you’re on Plasma).
The logic is sound. 