Does any of the Distro's See windows 7 shared folders "Out of the box"

[WTDTexas]

Expecting a storm of bad comments.

I need a distro that I can install on a system and give to someone, who is not a Linux person, and it will see Windows shared folders, and share local folders with windows with out tweaking.

If they have to... then the distro must have a easy way to change the workgroup name.

 

[atanere]

Not a bad comment (I don't think)... but my advice is just to give up now and save yourself a lot of grief.

No Linux distro, to my knowledge, will do "Windows home networking" at all. Period. Windows home networking is a proprietary Microsoft setup and it is how Windows 7 networking is typically configured because it is "easy" for the uneducated home user to set up. Microsoft does not share the details of this networking arrangement with Linux developers.

All Linux distros will communicate with Windows network shares via Samba, which is not all that hard to set up. But... BUT!... you have to disable Windows home networking on the Windows boxes and use standard TCP/IP networking. If you want to network Windows and Linux... it is the Windows computers that must be reconfigured. There are boat loads of tutorials and instructions on the Internet to learn how to setup a Windows-Linux shared network.

But there is no easy out-of-the-box solution to your request. If you want to give Linux to someone, then you need to help mentor that person too... and be their tech support to nurture them along until they can start to figure things out for themselves.

Good luck!

 

[WTDTexas]

I can get Samba to work with Linux and windows XP,7,10 easy, but I was just wondering if any one did it out of the box.

So I might give the Install DVD to a non-linux friend so they can test it on their old PC.

Edit you /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

Look for dns proxy = ?? line,
Insert next line under that one :
name resolve order = bcast hosts lmhosts wins

I tested it with Linux Mint 17.3, Ubuntu 15.1, LxLE, Deepin 15. My Linux test unit.

It worked with Shared folders on Windows 7 with and without homegroup, and windows 10 with and without homegroup.

Just make sure you have a "everyone", or "guest" on security and permissions on windows 7,10 systems.

That can be a security issue, but it works. I have not tested tweeting other settings on Windows 7,10 to tighten security.

 

[RowBat]

Why not just setup a quick file share? Then you don't have the security issues and you can share the files.
No Linux distro should just see files on a windows box. You could just make a quick script to config Samba to function properly... Your friend wont have to learn the process then and wouldn't be at risk of getting owned (as much).