Samba, like NFS, allows you to share directories on your server with other computers within your network. Although both serve the same purpose, they fit different environments and use cases.

NFS is the oldest method and is widely used in the Linux and UNIX world. While we certainly have newer solutions (such as SSHFS), NFS is tried and true. But it's perhaps not the best solution in a mixed environment. These days, it's possible that not every computer on your network runs a particular operating system, so you may have nodes where NFS access isn't available or is not practical.

As mentioned earlier, only the more expensive editions of Windows support NFS. If you have a large network of Windows machines, it would be quite expensive to update them all to a higher edition if you wouldn't otherwise need to. This is the area where Samba shines the most. Windows, Linux, and Mac computers can access directories shared via Samba. In the case of Windows, even the lower...