Samba continues strong in 2026 for this leading open-source SMB protocol re-implementation for Microsoft Windows file and print services interoperability. Samba 4.24 brings more features, including remote password management support.
Samba 4.24 brings authentication information audit support for some attributes that are not secret but relied on for some forms of authentication. Samba 4.24 also now allows larger streams with vfs_streams_xattr with the likes of XFS able to handle more than 64k of extended xattrs. There is also support for remote password management, Kerberos PKINIT KeyTrust log-on support, KDC improvements, and improvements to the Samba tool. Samba also now has an AIO rate-limiting VFS module if wanting to rate-limit async I/O operations.
Downloads and more details on the many Samba 4.24 changes via the project site at samba.org.
