Help Config File Server for Win7, OSX, Ubuntu, Fedora, and a WIN7 HTPC

[bdbeall]

Hey there.

So I am going to be living in a house in the fall with 3 other people. I run primarily linux systems with Win7 for gaming, one guy runs windows7, one girl runs Win Vista, and the two other girls use mac's osx.

I am building a computer to use as a Home Theatre PC with Win7, then on a VM in windows im planning on installing Ubuntu.

I have a 2TB HDD that i just had anyways i was going to use to cut on costs. My though was to Partition the Drive into 2 NTFS drives, 1 - 40GB (Win7), 1 - 1900GB(Ubuntu VM in WIN7).

What i need help with is configuring the Ubuntu OS to act like a file server that all 3 OS's can read and write to, This way everyone can access the data, and the HTPC on the WIN7 box can save dvr'd tv to and read music and movies off of.

My assumption is that this would be done using Samba, but i cant seem to find anything that will work for all OS's.

Thanks in advance,
B

[three18ti]

NTFS
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpNFSHowTo

uShare for UPnP streaming
Google

Samba Share
Install Samba Server on Ubuntu - How-To Geek

MAc, Linux, and Windows can all read smbfs and NTFS. I use uShare to play movies/music on my PS3 and XBox. My uShare is working for both PS3 and XBox.

Honestly, you can use a Windows to serve a share that everyone can access via UNC paths.

Windows:
\\[ip of server/domain name]\path\to\share
\\127.0.0.1\path\to\share
\\127.0.0.1\c$\

Linux (and I imagine OSX):
smb://<ip>/path/to/share
smb://127.0.0.1/path/to/share
smb://127.0.0.1/c$/