Linux Kernel in a Nutshell

Name

SMB_FS — SMB file system support (to mount Windows shares etc.)

SMB (Server Message Block) is the protocol Windows for Workgroups (WfW), Windows 95/98, Windows NT and later variants, and OS/2 Lan Manager use to share files and printers over local networks. Saying yes here allows you to mount their file systems (often called "shares" in this context) and access them just like any other Unix directory. Currently, this works only if the Windows machines use TCP/IP as the underlying transport protocol, not NetBEUI. For details, read Documentation/filesystems/smbfs.txt and the SMB-HOWTO, available from http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto.

If you just want your box to act as an SMB server and make files and printing services available to Windows clients (which need to have a TCP/IP stack), you don't need to say yes here; you can use the Samba set of daemons and programs (available from ftp://ftp.samba.org/pub/samba).