Network multiple ubuntu 11.10 computers with one another as well as with windows machines

Question

Ive been looking for a while now and I can't find a good answer. I tried Samba but it doesnt seem to even load for me, so I have no idea. What I want to do is Share files/folders across my network between 2 ubuntu laptops 1 ubuntu desktop, 1 mac book pro, 1 Windows 7 laptop, actually I only really care about getting 2 or more ubuntu machines to share in harmony so I can get my files easier than going one to the other with a flash drive, which only does me so good when the files exceed the drives limits.

Anyway long story short Im new to using ubuntu in general so maybe I just dont know where or how to look.

Answer 1

Ubuntu (as well as a lot of other distros) comes with Samba preinstalled. You just need to go to Network and you should be able to see Windows workgroups and browse them.

In fact in my experience Linux distros work pretty much better than Windows in such Windows workgroups (pretty paradoxical, yes), while workgroups with different Windows versions are sometimes problematic when accessing from Windows (specially if you mix 5.X (2000/XP) with 6.X (Vista/7)).