<font size="3">Samba offers NT 4.0 escape route</font>

One small but significant breakthrough from the open source Samba project offers Windows NT shops a low-cost migration option out of the Microsoft world. The new release of the software, which provides file and print services on Windows networks, can serve as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) on NT 4.0. Samba version 4.0 is available for download today.

"This is an escape route for people stuck on NT 4," Samba co-lead Jeremy Allison tells us. "Anything you can do on NT 4, we can do."

Microsoft once touted the domain model as suitable for all enterprises, before it realized it wasn't, and began promoting Active Directory as a successor. However, there are still plenty of older smaller businesses that run NT4.

"Microsoft makes a lot of money from SMEs. With Samba 4 you can set up a small server and provide hundreds of users with authentication, file and print," says Allison. The savings can be substantial: around $25 per user for a client access licence, and hundreds of dollars per server.

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Source: The Register