14 DAY TRIAL // The Samba server and the smb client represent two things that are meant to be used as means of integration with the operating system from Microsoft, Windows. While the smb client allows mounting and browsing through Windows shares, the Samba server allows the creation of shares from *NIX operating systems like Linux. The reason why Samba exists is a quite obvious one, Linux workstations couldn't work with Windows workstations; one couldn't provide file and print services both to Windows and Linux workstations if Samba didn't exist. The client allows you to work with the Windows shares. The samba server enables you to offer file and printing services, this way you can have both Windows and Linux workstations in an environment.
Smb4k is a client for "classic" SMB and the improved SMB protocol from Microsoft, CIFS. SMB stands for "server message block"; CIFS stands for Common Internet File System. The name of this application stands for "SMB for KDE". There's a good reason why it says "for KDE" - it's heavily integrated into KDE, as you will learn from this article.
How does this piece of software work and how does it make your life easier in a mixed Windows and Linux environment? Smb4k is a tool which can be used to manage and mount SMB and CIFS shares. It makes things easier because it can manage users and passwords for those shares by using KWallet. It can automatically detect Windows shares and display them in a tree structure, which can be expanded. In order to view the hosts on a particular workgroup, you expand the workgroup, then you expand the desired host and then you get to see the shares on that host. The next thing is clicking on those shares, which will open an authentication dialog box. After filling in the user name and the password, the share is mounted to the default location, to a directory named after the name of the share, inside the directory of the user that is currently logged in. This is the default behavior, which can be easily changed from the options menu by specifying a different location. The shares can be automatically mounted when the user starts Smb4k and unmounted when the user closes the application; all of these options can be found in the menus.
There are many things that can be changed from the settings dialog, things like showing hidden shares, the NetBIOS name and the workgroup which Smb4k uses when accessing the shares and many options that are related to the way shares are mounted.
Smb4k is a piece of software which can be used for browsing and mounting Windows shares. While it accomplishes this task, it does so without asking the user to do any kind of complex configuration; there's no need for any kind of special operation in order to view those shares. You just click the refresh button and you can see the shares of a computer that has just booted, no need to open or close the application for a refresh. If you don't want to have to start and close Smb4k each time you need it, it can easily be minimized and the application remains active. This is useful especially if you choose to automatically mount the shares at start up and unmount them when you exit the program.
Smb4k can make your life a lot easier if you need to work with Windows shares. You can use it to mount and unmount shares, bringing a share to your computer as if it were a regular folder. The only things that you have to know are the user name, the password and the share name.
The good:
It's an easy to use piece of software which helps you integrate Windows with Linux in your LAN. The good thing is that there's no need for a Windows server, Samba can be used for this purpose.
The bad:
The hardest thing about it is installing it, other than that, there's nothing wrong with Smb4k. Those who use Fedora Core 5 can find it in the extras repository.
The truth:
No matter if you plan to use Smb4k at home, at office or in a big enterprise, it's useful, it's one of those apps that make you think "this little tool is great, I wonder why I wasted time before doing things the old way". Those who migrated from Windows to Linux and those who work in an environment were windows machine represent the majority, it can be quite a relief when it comes to making transfers between computers that run Linux and those which run Windows.
