Nor is it even close to 'almost hard code it again'! Although in fairness to you, you do still need to configure it...

1. No worries - install it as above (will take you less than 2 mins...), then you can configure it via Webmin (more time consuming and IMO a PITA but shouldn't take more that 20 mins). The other option is to use the Fileserver appliance and add whatever other software you want (e.g. Apache, PHP, etc).

2. Cool. They can follow above! Or like you suggest you can customise an appliance just how you want and share it around! :)

3. I don't understand what you mean about 'hard coding' the config file?? I'd be interested to hear how you can deploy and 'do samba' easier in terms of man hours than a TKL LAMP install (all you have to do with TKL is install Samba! - Everything else is done!). But I do get the joy of working stuff out yourself and manually doing things...

I think it's great if you want to develop your own TKL appliance that sets it up exactly how you want it. And it sounds like you know others that want it also, so that's awesome that you are willing to fulfill that gap, helping yourself and others in the process.

To be clear, it would only be a relatively small subset of TKL users that would be in your situation. This is for a couple of reasons:

• Many are happy to use alternate ways to access their TKL filesystem (and IMO they are more consitent and reliable - but perhaps that's just my experience).
• Not all TKL users use Windows. A significant proportion of them use Linux and Mac as their main OS. Both OSes offer integration between remote Linux filesystems and local FS out of the box (so Samba integration not required).
• A significant amount of TKL users host their appliances in the cloud (primarily via the TKL Hub - i.e. AWS) and in that context Samba would be a serious security risk (SMB/CIFS should only ever be used within a LAN or via a VPN - never over the plain internet - it is just not secure enough).

If you document the proces of adding and configuring Samba then you could share that as a script (I suggest that you start a new thread). Or you could relatively easily create a ISO (using TKLPatch) or use TKLDev. If you make an ISO I'd also be quite happy to add it to the (unofficial) TKL Community SourceForge page if you want! 

Personally I find Samba a PITA to configure and maintain, and find it unpredictable and unreliable at times... Especially Samba3 with Win Vista and later. But like I said each to their own... Perhaps Samba4 may make this situation better...?

IMO a few (better) alternatives are below: (generally these are for your Win OS - with the exception of the last).

• Like I've already said I use (and like) Filezilla and it works fine for me... WinSCP apparently offers a few Win integration options so may be an even better alternative (although I've never used it)
• Win-SSHFS is another option (that I have used). It is in beta and appears to be abandonware (i.e. the devs are no longer developing it and it is unmaintained). Regardless, I use this regularly (when I am runnign Win) and it works pretty well for me, with the only bug I have come across is that on my laptop win-sshfs will crash when it wakes up (if a remote FS was mounted when it went to sleep).
• Swish is another way to integrate SFTP into Windows. I've never used it and it does report that it's in alpha but many blog posts suggest that it is stable to use..
• And last (but not least) if you are using your TKL appliance as a VM under VirtualBox then you can install VBox Guest Addons and use VBox shared folders.

There are probably many more alternatives to acheive your desire (of accessing a remote Linux filesystem as if it were a local one). And the beauty of TKL being open source, is that if any of them (like installing Samba) can be added to TKL then you can do that! :)