But you end up with the same files on all computers (a potential problem if we are talking about accessing the movies from all computers, for instance), right? It may be what Heather wants. But it is not what she asked for: an alternative to Samba. Sure: backups are needed. Do you use Syncthing on your whole home directory to backup your files? If not, you need a backup system anyway. I do not quite understand your point. Are you talking about letting a third user access some files/directories you want to share with her? It is possible to create a user on the system, a group containing you and this user, and to give read/write access to this group on files/directories you share with this third user. Really not that convenient... but I did not understand it was what Heather wanted.
Interesting.
