[Samba] Newby questions about using samba

[William Lugg]

I'm a relatively new user to Samba.  I'm running Linux Mint Silvia XFCE 
in a home environment on several machines and also have a Win10 machine 
that's my media server.  I'd like to be able to share files among all of 
the machines.  The office machine is my primary machine where I do most 
of my work.  I'd like to be able to put files I want to share in a 
shared location on the office machine and then access those files on the 
other machines.

In the somewhat distant past (two or three years ago), I got Samba to 
work under Ubuntu and KDE doing what I described above, but I've not 
been able to reproduce it since moving to Mint and XFCE.  I've been able 
to find some guides on the web that I think I've followed carefully, but 
they haven't yielded success for me.  Part of my problem is a lack of 
understanding in regard to applying the right configuration to my 
situation.  I'm a fairly savvy computer guy, but not so much in the 
networking arena - I know enough to get myself into trouble, I suppose.  
Reading the samba.org documentation, I'm just not sure where to start or 
which path to take to establish the correct configuration for my needs.

So, If someone could help me understand the correct way to set up Samba 
to achieve my goals, I would be most appreciative.  Links to guides 
and/or tutorials would be great as would a beginner's explanation of how 
it works for the home user.

Thanks in advance for the help.
Bill Lugg