Joe, Thanks for your reply which provides me with more information.
What do you know about Nemo? I noticed it is installed. When running Nemo, it seems quite similar to Thunar. I installed Nautilus. When I go to "Other Locations" in Nautilus, I do not see any listed Windows/Samba shares. When I attempt to access "Windows Network", I get the message "Failed to retrieve share list from server..." message so I am guessing there is still something missing in my Debian XFCE installation that would allow Nautilus to discover Windows/Samba shares. Thank you for your comment on mapping shares via fstab as I had wondered if mounting shares with noauto would be possible. Our main file share is SAMBA, which has worked well over the past years with Windows 7 and Windows 10, and also Debian Linux. For XFCE, I always install gvfs-backends and gvfs-fuse, then in Thunar I use "smb://[ip address of Share]/[sharename] and bookmark this connection. This process works well for me, but it would be nice if Thunar was able do discover shares as I believe Thunar could discover shares if whatever required supporting packages were installed. Since Nemo is also not able to discover shares in my XFCE computer, I assume other supporting packages need to be installed for this feature to work. But what would they be? I have a test Fedora Gnome and a LDME Cinnamon computers and while both behave differently, both find our file shares. I was not able to see any difference in file share related packages between the LDME computer and my Debian XFCE, though I expect I am missing something as even Nautilus on my XFCE is not able to discover the file shares. Of course Nautilus, Nemo, and Thunar work if I explicitly connect to these shares. George. On Tuesday, 31-12-2024 at 08:39 Joe wrote: > On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 07:34:20 +1100 > George at Clug <c...@goproject.info> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > Is anyone familiar with using Thunar to access Windows shares or Samba > > shares? I have found that after installing Debian Bookworm with XFCE, > > that Thunar is 1) not able to display Windows shares or Samba shares, > > 2) not able to connect to connect to Windows shares or Samba shares. > > > > Is it vital for you? > > > > Does someone know how get Thunar to display and access Windows shares > > or Samba shares? > > I've never tried, but Thunar is generally not as polished or capable as > Nautilus. It is still under development, still gaining capabilities. I > can remember when it didn't have 'extract here' for zip archives, not > that long ago. > > But I mount shares on local directories with /etc/fstab, where of course > Thunar has no difficulty in accessing them. They need to be mounted > noauto or boot will hang if they go missing, and are automounted on > first access. I access shares from various applications, so it makes > sense to mount them, I don't need to try browsing for shares in > unfamiliar networks. I'd probably use Nautilus or Konqueror for > something like that. > > A quick Google does suggest difficulties with Thunar, but then SMB > shares are always difficult, especially where Windows is involved. Much > sacrificing of chickens needed. These days I have no shares on > Windows, but it's hard enough getting Windows to deal properly with > Samba shares. > > -- > Joe > >
