# NFS

20 Hacker News commenters recommended NFS and 18 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend NFS as a fast, tunable and familiar way to share files over a network, often preferred over SMB. Critics say its authentication is complicated and its design suits network latency poorly.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast and snappy over networks (3 comments): "NFS is so much better than SMB (for me) it's unbelievable how much I missed out over the years using SMB" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46123530)) "Mount something over NFS and you'll be relieved about how snappy things remain." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849374)) "NFS is really a great protocol with a lot of tricks to reduce round trips" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48827548))
- Tunable for many edge cases (2 comments): "can be tweaked to solve a variety of edge-cases that no closed system can match" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851328)) "NFS can be used in a proper and productive manner, but it requires adjustments." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963569))
- Works well on modest hardware (2 comments): "I've found great convenience in a tight NFSv3 config running from a single high capacity HDD" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48829028)) "none of it worked as well as NFS did on ancient Sun pizzabox and lunchbox hardware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48016991))
- Works well for many uses (2 comments): "Use good old NFS instead of the latest longceph horngluster version" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47887576)) "I find it extremely useful and it works well for many use cases." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47975908))

## What people warn about

- Complicated authentication and setup (5 comments): "NFS would be great if you didn't had to chose between KDC infrastructure or "trust me bro I'm uid 501"." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878678)) "NFSv4 has no concept of true "Authentication" and just blindly accepts whatever the client sends" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48225833)) "I tried to set up network file sharing with NFS the other day and it was like pulling teeth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46083465))
- Mac client quirks and move bugs (2 comments): "had some really nasty move/duplication issues with NFS the last time I tried it in Finder.app" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928227)) "My beefs with NFS is MacOS being extremely quirk with settings." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48233979))
- Poorly suited to network latency (3 comments): "Latency is at least two orders of magnitude higher." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974308)) "its data model being ill-suited to network latency" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48005056)) "would hang processes if connection was lost." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954549))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Samba](https://hackerapproved.com/p/samba.md): 36 recommend
- [Netatalk](https://hackerapproved.com/p/netatalk.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "NFS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nfs/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).