Slashdot Mirror
ZDNet Reviews Samba 2.2
Jeremy Allison - Sam (of the Samba team) writes "eWeek
reviewed Samba 2.2
- they seem to like it !
It's certainly encouraging to get trade coverage like
this, I'm hoping the more people who report Samba use
in their organisation to press outlets will encourage
them to cover more Open Source/Free Software products !
"
When I saw "A Home For The Technologically Inept" I was just thinking of ZD Net.
1. give some of the shittiest software ever 5 star ratings
2. are routinely bashed for being MS biased
3. are suddenly considered a worthwhile source when they give an item of free software a good review
meaning:
1. the glowing review is meaningless, they give glowing reviews to buffed and polished turds
2. don't pat yourselves on the back too much, in case you appear two-faced
SAMBA without WinBind still isn't a general purpose File Server. You need to go and create the Unix accounts. My understanding is that WinBind is Linux only right now, but that it is being merged into the core code. Either way, SAMBA has a great niche in small group servers. For example, if I want a file server for 5-10 people, SAMBA rocks. You can join the SAMBA server to your NT Domain, setup the usermap, and give users access to the shares. For that purpose, I love SAMBA.
We are starting to evaluate SAMBA 2.2, it's great. Our core infrastructure here is NT4 for various reasons, but our OpenBSD machines all share out the relavent portions via SAMBA 2.0. It's terrific, if I'm not at a Unix workstation and want to work on a developing website, I connect to the share in Windows and go nuts. It's terrifically powerful.
From where SAMBA was 4 years ago when I started playing with it, it's a new world. You used to need to use separate accounts and not have reasonable NT integration. This allowed you to share out files, but not seemlessly. WinBind promises to make SAMBA servers drop and forget, just administer everything from your NT groups.
For a reasonable sized office (>10 people) running Windows, I think you'll be happiest with an NT 4.0 Domain with a PDC and BDC, but you can then do your file sharing off your SAMBA boxes. This saves a LOT on NT CALs, as you don't need NT CALs for PDC/BDC access, just file/print sharing. Let SAMBA handle that, and use NT as a domain controller. That way you have central logons without the expense. The cost of two NT servers isn't bad, the cost of NT CALs as your office grows and multiple file servers as access speed matters makes SAMBA great.
Additionally, if you do any web development, share our your site tree and you can edit files from anything. It's great, whether you are using Linux w/ smbmount, Windows with CIFS networking, MacOS Class w/ Dave, or MacOS X w/ Sharity, you have all your files accessable and can be editted locally. That sure beats SSH/Emacs.
Alex
1) lots of options - And not only lots of options, but lots of documentation and explanation of how to use the options to your advantage when setting up your Samba server. Out of all of the Linux meddling I've done so far (which, granted, isn't that much), I think Samba is one of the easiest packages to work with.
2) developer/customer support - Just from all of the posts that I have seen Jeremy post to slashdot, I can see that supporting his software is very important to him and his team. This attitude of serving his 'customers' in a top notch manner has largely been lost in today's 'new' economy. I can't begin to tell you how much I despise 'customer service' as it usually involves sitting on the phone or at the store, not being served. And usually crappy service when you do get it.
I, in fact, do not care if ZDNet or anyone else likes Samba. I'm sold on it merely from the human factor of the people who write it. That alone will keep me coming back for more. My advice to the Samba team - KEEP IT UP!