The first alpha releases of Samba 3.0 provide a preview of whats to come in the next major release of the open-source, Windows-compatible file and print server for Unix.
The biggest changes are internal, including new native support for Unicode and NT-compatible error codes, which both improve compatibility with Windows servers. These steps are key in eventually allowing remote Samba server administration using Windows administration tools; only a few administration tasks, such as viewing file shares (see screen), are possible now.
Samba 3.0 has native Active Directory support. Using Samba 3.0 Build Alpha 12, I joined a Windows 2000 Active Directory domain and then could connect to Windows and Samba-hosted shares using Kerberos authentication.