ugo

You need to reread my message. I never claimed windows does not support smb out of the box. I am claiming that windows 11 will not out of the box allow connections to a properly configured smb (v3, in my case) server because they disable guest login because “security” even though the guest account configured on the server can’t access anything outside of the configured folder.

Yes, windows is harder to use than linux, because their tools do not conform to the protocols they claim to support. Among other things that make it harder to use.

Nope, completely wrong assumptions on your part

No I’m not, I am providing this data point because it’s the most recent I have. Every time I have to use windows, everything is more difficult.

The one good thing I can say about it is that it handles gpu driver crashes more gracefully in my experience. That’s about it.

The only reason most windows users put up with it is that most don’t even know of alternatives. Maybe they know of mac.

I set up a stupid simple smb server on a raspberry pi.

My other linux devices could see and use it out of the box. iOS could see and use it out of the box. tvOS could see and use it out of the box. I am willing to bet actual money that android would be able to see and use it out of the box.

Windows couldn’t. Due to some ass policy I had to google for hours and try out 3 different solutions, all of them requiring registry edits, to make it work. Because for “security” MS disallows connecting to a smb server if, essentially, the smb server isn’t hosted on windows (that was the gist of it IIRC).

Yes, using windows is harder than using linux. Way harder.