Thank you. In that thread, where the OP lists the UFW rule that he created, that 172.16 address that he gives -- is that address particular to his computer or network such that I would need to put in something else; and if the latter, then what would I be putting in instead?

Question: I found this page. Scrolling down to the "Allow and Deny (specific rules)" section, can I simply input sudo ufw allow 3702/udp and accomplish the same goal?

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Just as a little experiment, I set up a VM running a Slackware64 complete install.

On this machine, I set up SAMBA using the method described above for a passwordless guest login, complete with the "nobody:nogroup" user and loose permissions as per the instructions.

Findings:

1. Other Linux machines could easily access the share without a password and create/modify/delete files and directories within the share.
2. Windows 10 Pro couldn't. This machine has the latest updates installed.

I tried the registry hacks and modifying the Group Policy settings as per the posts above, but no dice. At this point, it looks to me like Microsoft have killed passwordless guest access to SAMBA shares.

Just to confirm my suspicion, I added a normal SAMBA share... and Windows could access it after entering the username & password. Importantly, and as I mentioned above, Windows lets you choose to remember the username & password. After rebooting the Windows machine, I was still able to access the passworded share without having to enter the password again.

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On the other hand I am running Windows 10 home 21H1 and can access the guest share without a password. The latest is 21H2 and it does have some security updates. I believe the crux of the problem is that kubuntu can not access shares on Windows without a password. Disabling password required shares does not work. It does not for me either.

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All right, let me throw something else into the mix here.

I booted back into the Live CD of Netrunner 16.16. (Note that this OS is from 2016.) Using Dolphin, I managed to point-and-click my way to the Windows Workgroup. Unlike Kubuntu 20.04 LTS, zero complaints were thrown up about being unable to find a workgroup.

Better yet, right away I was able to see every single one of the computers on the LAN, including both Linux machines and Windows systems ranging from 7 to 10 to 11. And best of all, I could point-and-click to the shared folders on most of them! (Ironically, when trying to access it from Netrunner, only the Kubuntu 20.04 LTS laptop gave me an error, "Timeout on server.")

From this experience I figure that whatever is going on, has more to do with changes made since 2016 to Linux or to Kubuntu specifically, than with anything Microsoft might have done with their OSes -- otherwise Netrunner 16.16 wouldn't be able to access all of those Windows systems.

Now the question to my mind becomes, "what can I do to make Kubuntu 20.24 behave like Netrunner 16.16 with respect to browsing a Windows workgroup?

The only thing I can think of at the moment is to downgrade samba.

Downgrade samba to 4.11.6 and add the directives from post #2. There are a number of dependencies...
You can put the samba package and its dependencies on hold so they will stay the same version when installing upgrades.

When I first installed samba running 4.11.6 since SMB V1 had not been removed yet and all of the shares were still visible in Dolphin's samba shares window.

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That is my experience as well. However, I can enter any arbitrary username and password and access the Windows share (configured for everybody access).

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Yes, this should be sufficient…

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But on your Windows machines, you've re-enabled SMBv1, no?

To answer your question about what has changed in the past few years:
https://cyware.com/news/what-is-smb-...ttack-c5a97c48
https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/...sans_one_smb1/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ult-in-windows

And what's to come:
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/04/20/mi...ows-this-year/
"Microsoft plans to remove SMB1 binaries from future versions of Windows. Windows client and server editions won't include the required drivers or DLL files anymore, and connections that require SMB1 will fail as a consequence."

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Thank you. Sadly, even after doing that (and rebooting the Kubuntu machine for good measure), Dolphin (or whatever) is still stumbling at the "no workgroup found" step when I try to browse the Samba shares from there.

Thanks to the creation of the shared folder as described in the YouTube video @rkelsen had linked to, I can currently browse to the Kubuntu laptop from the Windows 10 PC. But I still can't browse to the laptop from the Windows 7 PC -- the laptop is not even listed as being on the network.

Hope this helps to narrow things down a bit further.

Thanks for the links, I'm trying to absorb the information as best I can.

Regarding which Windows PCs have SMBv1 enabled, by following the instructions on this page, I've determined that both the Windows 7 and the Windows 10 PCs do currently have SMBv1 installed. Yet the former can't see either Kubuntu machine, while the latter can see both. (And neither Kubuntu machine can see either of the Windows machines, always failing at the "no workgroup found" step.)

The problem that I'm hoping to solve now is how to get Dolphin in Kubuntu to browse Windows PCs.

I think we have gone full circle maybe more then once...

On my Kubuntu VM 20, With the latest updates the installed samba version is. 4.13.7 which removes support for SMB V1.
Without SMB V1 browsing samba shares or workgroups is no more.

wsdd allows Windows to browse for linux samba shares.

avahi allows for linux to browse for network devices i.e. printer and network shares etc.

Both my Windows 7 and 10 can see the Kubuntu VM (with wsdd running) and access the guest share.

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It sure feels like that!

The Kubuntu laptop has avahi installed and running. Still no dice, it stumbles at the "unable to find workgroup" step. FWIW, in comparison the Netrunner 16 Live CD, when booted, is also running avahi and it can see the workgroup as well as all the computers (both Linux and Windows) on the network.

Update: I burned a Netrunner 21.01 Live CD, to compare how it performs in this regard to Netrunner 16. Opening Dolphin and then clicking on Network --> Shared Folders (SMB) resulted in neither an error about not finding a workgroup, nor in any computers getting listed (Windows OR Linux).

The package list on DistroWatch says that Netrunner 21.01 comes with SAMBA 4.9.5..! Quoting Dora the Explorer (probably), "Can you say: la puerta esta abierta?"

I know I'm repeating myself, but: Your aversion to passwords is not helping here. Even if you finally manage to get this working the way you want, future Windows updates will break it.

The Samba server in my garage can be seen by my TV and my wife & kids use it for streaming and storing photos, videos, documents, etc. I'm not using SMB1. Nor am I using guest logins.

How is this possible?

Easy: Every device in the house is set to "remember" the login details. There's no magic to it.

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Ok, apparently not working as it supposed to. (For me using openSUSE Leap 15.3 with KDE version 5.23.4, Dolphin version 21.12.0, Windows hosts are enumerated via WS-Discovery with Dolphin as expected.) FWIW, I did stumble across a similar reported issue in this reddit thread pertaining to *buntu 20.04....
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comment..._2004_release/

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All right, I decided to experiment with this password thing. There is one (previously unmentioned) Windows PC on the network that's set up to require a password before booting into Windows. (I seldom need to access it, so it hasn't been a big deal.) I tried to access it as follows:

First, I opened Dolphin and clicked on Shared Folders (SMB). The usual obnoxious error about being "unable to find any workgroups" cropped up for the umpteenth time. After clearing the error, I typed the PC's IPv4 address on the smb:// line. I was then asked for the username and password, so I entered the computer name and the password used to boot into it.

The PC's contents now showed up in the background, but in the foreground there was a brand-new popup informing me that

HUH??? Now what? Yet another hoop to jump through!

I decided to see if I could bypass it by clicking the Cancel button, and it did go away. Now I had access to the entire Windows PC and not just its Public folders. But then when I clicked on the Back arrow to make my way back through the network, the same popup appeared, and this time it kept reappearing every time I clicked on Cancel followed by the back arrow. To make progress going back, I discovered that I had to click the back arrow twice and then dismiss the popup at each new step.

Next I re-entered the IPv4 address and told Dolphin to remember the Windows PC's password. I was able to get in without entering THAT password, but again I kept getting asked for this kdewallet password. So we have eliminated one bump in the road (the computer password), but there are now three other bumps to get rid of:

1. Is there any way to obliterate the "unable to find any workgroups" error, so that I don't have to clear it every time I want to use the smb:// method and can just get to the PC directly?
2. Is there a way to get Dolphin (or whatever) to remember and list all the available computers on the network, so that I don't have to retype the IPv4 address every time I want to browse to a computer?
3. Is there a way to obliterate this demand for a kdewallet password and just get already to what I want/need to get done?