The Samba development team, through Jeremy Allison, proudly announced a few minutes ago (December 11, 2012) that the final and stable release of the highly anticipated Samba 4.0 authentication and print server suite for Microsoft Windows clients is now available for download.

After 10 years of hard work, the Samba 4.0 software is the first free compatible and reliable implementation of Microsoft’s Active Directory protocols, supporting all versions of Microsoft Windows clients, including Windows 8. It features support for Group Policy, Windows Administration tools and Roaming Profiles.

“Samba 4.0 comprises an LDAP directory server, Heimdal Kerberos authentication server, a secure Dynamic DNS server, and implementations of all necessary remote procedure calls for Active Directory.”

“Samba 4.0 provides everything needed to serve as an Active Directory Compatible Domain Controller for all versions of Microsoft Windows clients currently supported by Microsoft, including the recently released Windows 8,” was stated in the official release announcement.

Highlights of Samba 4.0:

· Support for NTVFS file server; · Support for two DNS solutions (a simple internal DNS server and a complex BIND plugin that uses the BIND DLZ mechanism); · Support for the Microsoft SMB 2.1 file serving protocol; · Experimental support for Microsoft SMB3 file serving protocol; · Support for Integrated Clustered File Server, through the “clustered tdb" (ctdb) technology; · Improved winbind, now with support for easy integration with the Microsoft Active Directory services; · Support for Samba 4.0 Active Directory compatible servers; · Microsoft Exchange integration; · OpenChange integration; · NTP project integration for secured NTP replies; · Added a new Python scripting interface.

Last but not least, Samba 4.0 was created using the official protocol documentation published by Microsoft Corporation and is certified as "secure" and has received the Coverity "Integrity Rung 2" certification.

Before installing Samba 4.0, keep in mind that there are nine known issues remained, which can be viewed in the official release notes.

Download Samba 4.0.0 right now from Softpedia.