I use LANDrop regularly. It's the lowest-friction solution I've found so far to the whole "why doesn't this #$%@#$% SMB access work, it was working fine last week" thing with a mixed-OS set of computers.
The windows machines on the other hand took a lot of figuring out to get the access I was looking for. Seems the windows built in username AND a (broken?) Form of password caching really does a number when using SMB shares hosted on a not windows machine. I 100% agree with you however, it is a super frustrating experience that leaves one bewildered, even though it should be simple to get up and running.
(It took far less time to setup goestools on 2 machines, than to get the shared folders to work correctly through the household)
That and bad USB ports.
And there being some decent FTP clients for android.
I guess there’s way more money in solving it with a heavy cloud service that can charge rent for what should be a trivial core feature of every OS.
*As suggested by another HNer.
I was given to understand that NFSv4 was made to be much better for these purposes?
Seriously, I can even get my Windows 98 SE laptop to talk with the rest of my Windows machines (including Windows 11) via SMB perfectly fine. Meanwhile, Samba requires divine miracles just to get the bloody thing working for thirty seconds.
SMB usually works well in a domain environment between client and server machines if they are all on the same domain. SMB often and randomly does not work between two client computers on a domain and in workgroup environment. I have to configure SSH server on Windows computers that I access often because of random inability of Windows to talk to another computer (sometimes sitting right next to it).
Samba on the other hand takes some setting up but once it works, it keeps working...until the next OS/major version upgrade.
Setup a WINS server.
WINS, ancient and depreciated, and "they" say it should never be needed anymore, will act as a "cat herder" in a workgroup environment.
The nice part about WINS is the server requires no configuration. You start the service and point the clients to it and that's it. Configure your DHCP server to hand out the WINS address and you're done. There's a good chance your problems may disappear.