Mastering Ubuntu Server - Second Edition

File server considerations

There are two common technologies you can utilize to share files with your users, Samba and NFS. In fact, there's nothing stopping you from hosting both Samba and NFS shares on a single server. However, each of the two popular solutions is valid for particular use cases. Before we get started with setting up our file server, we should first understand the differences between Samba and NFS, so we can make an informed decision as to which one is more appropriate for our environment. As a general rule of thumb, Samba is great for mixed environments (where you have Windows as well as Linux clients), and NFS is more appropriate for use in Linux or UNIX environments, but there's a bit more to it than that.

Samba is a ...