There is much on this here:

Samba - Let's dance - Whenever two (or more) computers are connected to each other, there are certain things they want to do: Usually files need to be shared among users on the systems and printers should be available for printing from all workstations (and even from the playstations ). SAMBA is a suite of programs for Linux which enables Linux to communicate with Windows across a LAN.

NFS - Network File System - If only UN*X machines are involved, NFS and CUPS are the means of choice. In this lesson we will assume there is a linux-only network (read: Only Linux-PCs will offer and/or ask for files). Windows-PCs can be in the network, but if they want to take part in the sharing, we will have to use the SMB-Protocol. SMB is explained in the Samba-Tutorial. For easy comparison, I tried to preserve the structure of the Samba-Tutorial also in this document.