This is one thing that I think should be easy but it isn't: disabling Samba. In Windows, there is a checkbox for disabling file sharing, why not KDE?
Under Kubuntu 8.10, KDE 4.2.2 in System Settings, there is no place to find a checkbox that essentially says: "Enable/Disable Samba". Even the detailed "Samba" System Settings panel can configure everything else about Samba, but not this.
This kind of request has popped up over time, as searching Google for advice on how to disable Samba produces this top-rated page. It solves the problem by advising to uninstall Samba, which is what I had to do too. This doesn't seem intuitive, usable or safe ("will my settings be preserved if I want to reinstall?" "will I mess up the uninstallation process and harm my system?" are thoughts I had.) I tried looking for a CLI way to disable Samba, but gave up after I realized that it was out of the scope of my experience.
It would seem that the most logical place to put an "Enable Samba" checkbox would be in the System Settings -> Sharing panel. Actually, it would be more clear to say, "Enable file and printer sharing with Windows users", as the term "Samba" is a technical term that means nothing to newbies, myself included when I came to the Linux ecosystem.
(This was originally posted to the KDE brainstorm forums, where it has received favorable votes of support: http://forum.kde.org/make-samba-easy-to-disable-and-enable-t-61594.html)
This is the link to the Google search on how to deal with this "problem," by way of uninstalling Samba:
http://