I would like to be able to access the files on my Ubuntu laptop from my Android phone and tablet. Ideally, I would want to do this over my own secure Wlan and then over sftp or Samba shares. Since there is no Wlan that is accessible to me where I want to do this, I want to create that Wlan network with the laptop's built in wifi or a Wifi USB stick. This Wlan should be accessible by ordinary Android devices.
Here is the problem: when choose "create new wireless network" in the network manager applet, the network created is NOT available in any of my mobile devices. I am told this is because it is an "ad hoc" network which is not supported by these devices.
There are some instructions on how to create managed networks (not sure if this is the correct term) but those look very complex and often differ among each other. Also, all of these instructions are for making the internet connection of the laptop available over Wifi - which I do not need. All I need is for the Wifi network to make the notebook files available, so the only host that needs to be accessible over this Wlan is the notebook.
Is there a (hopefully) easy way to just start such a WLan network? If not, would it be possible to achieve what I want with some other kind of hardware (other than a simple USB Wifi stick), so I can create a Wlan where my laptop is the only accessible host?
I think with the increasing number of mobile devices, and with both the mobile phones/tables AND the laptop having their Wlan hardware built right in, it is odd that there is no easy way to connect them directly and without the necessity that both devices have access to some other Wlan.
EDIT: I think this may be not, as suggested a duplicate, since the answer to the other question, as well as many other often slightly different recipes, try to share the internet connection of the computer that provides the access point, while I just want to access files on this computer or use services there, simply using the IP address. So what I was looking for is the easiest way to achieve this. I think I may have found a solution in the meantime which is less complex as the answer for the suggested duplicate, but I cannot seem to create an answer here.