After a lot of testing, I learned some things, and I think I can mark this as a solution.
It’s not that the Samba share is or isn’t working in Fedora Silverblue, or any other Unix/Linux system. Samba is working fine. I was able to mount the share via Files/Nautilus in Debian and Fedora Silverblue, and in Thunar (and Gigolo) with the gvfs-smb package in OpenBSD.
The problem has been with apps I am using to work with the files on the Samba share. Some work, others do not.
And the issue is with the gvfs filesystem that is used to mount the Samba shares. The issues are the same when an sftp site is mounted via gvfs in Nautilus/Files.
When I discovered the same issues in Nautilus/Files with sftp, I knew my problem had nothing to do with Samba, per se.
It was gvfs – specifically the apps that can and can’t work with a gvfs-mounted filesystem.
What threw me was that in Debian 12, I was using a text editor (Gedit) that works well with gvfs, and In Fedora, my editor (GNOME Text Editor) does not work terribly well in that environment.
So I did a bunch of testing across Debian 12 and Fedora Silverblue 40 (with GNOME) and OpenBSD 7.5 (with Xfce).
It all depends on which applications you are using to read and write to files in a gvfs filesystem.
Here’s what I learned:
Apps that work with GVFS filesystems:
- LibreOffice Writer (I haven’t tested other programs in the office suite, but this one is a champ)
- Gedit (Used to be my go-to text editor … might return to the throne)
- Emacs (GUI version via Flatpak. The first save of a file throws a chmod error, but it’s smooth after that)
- Kate
- Kwrite (Great showing from the KDE apps)
- Neovim (file opens in the terminal app with the GNOME file-open dialog. I’m surprised this works where Vim does not)
Apps that read only and can’t write:
- GNOME Text Editor
- Vim (Flatpak in terminal)
Apps that don’t work at all:
Apps that read and write, but not seamlessly
- Mousepad (tested in OpenBSD, a dialog says the file wasn’t written, but it actually is. The dialog is annoying)
Update: The lack of consistency in apps being able to edit files in gvfs-mounted filesystems isn’t a Silverblue/Atomic problem. It’s a Flatpak problem.
Some Flatpaks (like Emacs and LibreOffice) deal well with gvfs, others (GNOME Text Editor, Geany) do not.
But so far, I have had no issues with apps installed the “traditional” way (dnf in Fedora, apt in Debian).
I’m not excited about layering editors in Silverblue (though I did it in the past with Vim), but I will do it for science.
tl;dr It’s not Silverblue or Fedora, it’s Flatpak.