Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being developed in parallel to the stable 3.0 series. The main emphasis in this branch is support for the Active Directory logon protocols used by Windows 2000 and above.

Samba4 alpha13 follows on from the alpha release series we have been publishing since September 2007. Because various tarballs have been published claiming to be alpha 12 or following on from alpha 12 we have decided to call this release alpha 13, to prevent any possible confusion.

Samba 4 is currently not yet in a state where it is usable in production environments. Note the WARNINGS section in the WHATSNEW file, which aims to document what should and should not work.

The uncompressed tarball and patch files have been signed using Jelmer Vernooij's GnuPG keys (ID 1EEF5276 and D729A457). The source code can be downloaded now. See the announcement on the mailing list for more information.