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fedropospa

Member

Registered: 2022-02-21

Posts: 1

How open Windows share folders XFCE Thunar or other network resources?

Hello.

Before question.
I use linux, but not much, prefer Microsoft Windows and I'm Windows system administrator.
I try move part of my Windows PC's in organization to Linux.
Most requirement features for me: choose distribution with low resource usage, heterogeneous OSes expected for me(Windows workstations, Windows Server, Linux Server, Linux Workstations), less manual configuration, stable, enterprise in mind.
After trying some days few distribution was choosen debian+xfce, BUT a lot of manual works for basic stuff.

Question.
I have:
Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) x86_64
XFCE 4.16
When open Thunar and try "Go-> Browse network" got error:

failed to browse the network.
the specified location is not supported.

Try type in address bar manually smb://192.168.0.X to my network share windows, nothing happens.
Try after this find something in current forum or internet about this error, but no one write about this basic error.
Just for check, nearly I already try another distributions: Xubuntu current stable LTS - same error, debian + KDE Plasma - works perfectly, Kubuntu - KDE Plasma - works perfectly.
Guess need some "terminal work" to do? I cant figure out what to do. Help.

P.S. It is not toxic critic or trolling or whatever else, but...I mean...linux society try involve Windows users to Linux and after ~30 years of development it is still not equal even to Windows XP SP3 for avarage users. Just fresh install and i already need go to terminal and I even don't know what to do. I will try use KDE Plasma as second virtual machine near XFCE to figure out, maybe it is better for me and my users nor XFCE. Feels a lot of work for nothing with wasting time, maybe will turn back to Windows forever later.

P.P.S And...um...forum registration:

Are you an human?
What is the output of this command :
Linux: date -u +%jXfce|sha256sum|sed 's/\W//g'
FreeBSD/OpenBSD: date -u +%jXfce|sha256|sed 's/\W//g'
NetBSD: date -u +%jXfce|sum -a sha256|sed 's/\W//g'

Administrators of XFCE forum, you think it is normal? Welcome to gnu/linux adviced to me some colleagues in office and around internet. Reality.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,123

Re: How open Windows share folders XFCE Thunar or other network resources?

Question.
I have:
Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) x86_64
XFCE 4.16
When open Thunar and try "Go-> Browse network" got error:

failed to browse the network.
the specified location is not supported.

Try type in address bar manually smb://192.168.0.X to my network share windows, nothing happens.

With debian, you need to install gvfs-backends to enable support for network access. This would be a good starting place to learn about the inner workings of Debian.

P.P.S And...um...forum registration:

Are you an human?
What is the output of this command :
Linux: date -u +%jXfce|sha256sum|sed 's/\W//g'
FreeBSD/OpenBSD: date -u +%jXfce|sha256|sed 's/\W//g'
NetBSD: date -u +%jXfce|sum -a sha256|sed 's/\W//g'

Administrators of XFCE forum, you think it is normal? Welcome to gnu/linux adviced to me some colleagues in office and around internet. Reality.

Yes. It keeps the spam bots away.

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gbell12

Member

Registered: 2025-08-20

Posts: 1

Re: How open Windows share folders XFCE Thunar or other network resources?

Old thread, but it's popping up first on Google so I thought I'd detail a solution.

On a fresh Debian 13 / Xfce4 install, you won't be able to browse network shares with Thunar until you install:

# apt install gvfs-backends

Notice the "#" - that means I became the root user with "su -". This was necessary because my user was not put in the sudoers file by the installer, so I wasn't able to "sudo" that apt command. Remember, this is a fresh install, otherwise unconfigured.

I rebooted after this but I'm not sure I needed to.

"Browse Network" will now show up in the left pane, but, for me, it didn't do anything. Perhaps because I'm running Debian 13 inside a virtualbox.

But, I was able to type smb://192.168.15.100/ in Thunar's address bar and get a list of my samba shares. Replace that IP address with the address of your own samba/share server.

This is a bit unfriendly to new users. Is there a reason gvfs-backends isn't installed by default when a desktop is selected?

Last edited by gbell12 (2025-08-20 02:13:18)

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,123

Re: How open Windows share folders XFCE Thunar or other network resources?

This is a bit unfriendly to new users. Is there a reason gvfs-backends isn't installed by default when a desktop is selected?

That would be  question to ask the Debian folks who put together the distro.You can see that it is a "suggested" package for the thunar package.

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