“Created in 1991 by Andrew Tridgell, Samba 2.0.6 edged out
Compaq’s Advanced Server for Unix on the basis of platform support,
performance, ease of configuration and ease of debugging. Its
support for login control and a WINS (Windows Internet Name
Service) client and server also put it ahead of the competition.
During our tests, we had Samba perform the major functions of a
Windows NT server, including authentication, and we were very
impressed with the results. Samba surpassed Syntax TotalNet
Advanced Server in the speed of both reads and writes. Finally, for
those who must have a GUI, there are several available for Samba.
The lack of licensing costs is another plus.”
“Regarding features, the first difference we found between Samba
and its competitors was in how it is configured. Samba is the only
SMB server that asks users to edit configuration files manually
instead of issuing commands to alter the state of the server. This
could be somewhat painful for novices, but we found it to be a more
reliable method than those used in the other packages….”
“When we made a change, all we had to do was to restart the SMB
server (don’t worry, all the clients reconnect seamlessly), and our
configuration was available. With the other two products, we were
presented with commands that left us uncertain as to how the system
was configured. The syntax of Samba’s configuration file isn’t
terrible either, and the default configuration file has many
helpful comments to make configuring Samba surprisingly
painless.”