"Note, as well, that this "open" solution (which, to
the best of my knowledge, was never marketed as such) had nothing
for Unix users. SMB was strictly PC stuff, and PC stuff was shunned
by Unix users as being too dinky, too underpowered, and incapable
of running a "real OS." As MS Windows quickly became a de facto
standard, so did the SMB protocol. Users began using MS Windows'
built-in (SMB) file and print sharing to offer new levels of data
sharing. When Windows 95 came along, it got even easier. Using the
standard GUI approach, anyone with a mouse and a finger to click it
could set up file shares, shared printers, password-protected
shares, and even drive mappings. Gone was the need for the arcane
batch files required by earlier versions of Windows and by
contemporary versions of Novell Netware. So today, we are left with
a single great divide: the Microsoft, PC, SMB world, on the one
hand, and the Unix, big iron, NFS world on the other. So what are
the differences? There are quite a few, and we'll start by looking
at naming."