and not NFS?
click on a folder and select proprieties, tab "share".
3 Answers
Most Ubuntu users will be sharing there network with at least one Windows or Apple machine and samba is the only fully featured sharing service which is capable of being accessed by the majority of computers what ever operating system they happen to be using.
Also the GUI method of setting up shares is the easiest to do for someone new to Ubuntu which means that they will probably have been using one of the afore mentioned OS's. Once you are a more experienced user you will probably have figured out that Ubuntu is the best OS in the world and will have wiped and Installed it on all their other systems so no need for samba any more.
Just remember we were all nube's once (holds hand to chest)
Because all OS'es can handle SMB, not all, I am looking at you Windows, can handle NFS.
Ubuntu is meant to be easy to use, so it uses default values that will work the best for the most people. You can always define a NFS share yourself.
And (as suppliment to the other answers) SMB (at al) is an open, royalty free specification. Its origins might be in the depths of Redmond but thanks in part to the EU and in greater part to the fantastic work of the Samba project and its contributors, is a highly compatible simple sharing service that, when it works, just works.
Don't get me wrong, NFS is great. It's faster and lighter than Samba... But try getting three different operating systems talking to each other over it.
There's also the issue of needing to be root to set NFS shares. Not an insurmountable issue in the scale of things but a low priority goal in the scope of the NFS project when Samba already does the job so well.
