Share Folder Locally

A while ago I did a lot of fiddling about with a terminal on my desktop to set up Nitroshare for copying files to my laptop and possibly Samba, via the wireless links from those computers through my modem. Eventually I instead managed to share a folder with my laptop which was much more useful. Then I found that if I installed nautilus-share I would be able to share the folder much more simply from the Nautilus GUI in future. I also had to use a terminal to type

service nmbd start

and/or

service smbd start

and do a restart between. I probably also had to do something to make nmbd stay running for next time I started the desktop.

That setup got lost in an OS change/update, so I need to do it again. Unfortunately when I look at my notes I'm lost in all the detail of what I tried and abandoned when I improved on it - like Nitroshare.

So far I have installed nautilus-share, and if I do nautilus -q then nautilus (which I think stops and starts Nautilus) I can see the sharing options in Nautilus. However if I exit Nautilus or restart the desktop, that's all gone again. I have also fiddled about with

service nmbd start

and/or

service smbd start

but that doesn't work.

I can't find a guide that doesn't talk about servers and give loads of commands that don't seem necessary. What do I need to do? No sarcy comments about making clearer notes next time please :)