SUMMARY: Samba versus Compaq's commercial offering

From: Kevin Criss <ksc_at_alpha2.dwd.state.in.us>
Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2000 13:42:56 -0500 (EST)

I must say this was a popular post. I received 30 responses. One guy was just letting me know he was on vacation though. Anyway it will still be hard to thank everyone who responded but let me try.

Thanks to:
 arrigo_at_albourne.co
 lucio_at_ifctr.mi.cnr.it
 paul_at_AuroraGrp.Com
 Mike_Shield-1_at_sbphrd.com
 aul.o'sullivan_at_paribas.co
 tpb_at_doctor.zk3.dec.com
 tony.lindstrom_at_tekla.fi
 ggallen_at_slackinc.com
 yaron_at_pbs.com
 west.daniel_at_epa.gov
 joe_at_meng.ucl.ac.uk
 kroy_at_ss.ca.gov
 Tom.Brand_at_bmc.org
 smutchler_at_gfs.com
 frank_at_bondnet.com
 cbrooks_at_nature.berkeley.e
 Arun.Sanghvi_at_gnf.com
 JOHLOS_at_HBSI.COM
 ken_at_cs.uml.edu
 cprice_at_molbio.unmc.edu
 sharpe_at_ns.aus.com
 dcollins_at_alpine-la.com
 mjbr_at_tdk.dk
 jharvey_at_eccnet.eccnet.com
 bevanb_at_ee.uwa.edu.au
 jay.leafey_at_mindless.com
 anthony.miller_at_vf.vodafon
 werner.rost_at_boge.mannesma
 kola.Milutinovic_at_ev.co.yu
 martin.barrett_at_carltontv

The overwhelming majority of the people who responded said they they were
using Samba and that Samba was the greatest thing since sliced bread. There
was no reason to choose the commercial variant since Samba was free. One guy
mention old versions of Samba had security holes so be sure to get the latest
release if you decide on Samba.

Several good arguments were made in favor of Advanced Server for UNIX (ASU) in terms of increased functionality though.

Below you will find some quotes from the Sama users and some quotes from
parties interested in the Advanced Server for UNIX. I could not quote everyone
there were just too many responses. Once again most of the people who
responded voted for Samba. Samba wins :)

P.S. Sorry for not signing a names to your quotes, some people like it and some don't. Just playing it safe.

   ---
   Samba is brilliant, free and simply has no competitors in the
   commercial arena. If you have anything to do with Windoze get that
   and junk you NT servers.
   ---

   ---
   I use samba on Unix to access my Unix drives from a PC running NT.
   Samba is free, powerful and easy to install.
   I won't spend money for what I can have for free.
   The Samba home page is at http://samba.anu.edu.au/samba/
   ---

   ---
   It's open source software. It works pretty well. I've recently put in
   a couple of office networks using a Linux/Samba server. When I was in
   a University environment, we used Samba as a file server for a lot of
   our PC labs. Never had any problems with it.

   Here's the main URL: http://samba.anu.edu.au/samba/

   At the University we used to use Pathworks, but got rid of it in favor of
   Samba. I have no idea what Compaq currently sells into that space.
   ---

   ---
   Personal opinion only but,

   a. You must be mad.
   b. You have money to burn.

   And in answer to your question, try looking up Advanced Server, which is
   rather a lot more than a freeware disk service
   ---

   ---
   We use samba here on DU4.x and it works fine- no probs.
   ---

   ---
   Samba isn't shareware, it's free. It is excellent software. We use it here
   in a BIG way. The main servers, serving 100 Windoze users are all using
   Samba to accomplish this task. I've got a Samba box pretending to be an NT
   PDC. I use it at home to share files with my wife's machine when she's
   booting into Windoze.

   Don't avoid Samba. If nothing else, it's WAY better than installing NT on
   all those alphas!
   ---

   ---
   From: "Dr. Tom Blinn, 603-884-0646" <tpb_at_doctor.zk3.dec.com>

   SAMBA is in fact public domain and well regarded. There are versions for
   Tru64 UNIX.

   The "commercial" equivalent is Advanced Server for UNIX (ASU), which is a
   Microsoft product OEMed by Compaq for Tru64 UNIX. It's delivered on the
   AP CDrom media as part of the base OS kit, and I believe that you get some
   level of "free" licenses with the base OS license, but I'd have to review
   the marketing literature, etc. to be sure.

   My understanding is that SAMBA works quite well for a small scale setup,
   but that as the number of client systems and the level of activity grows,
   the ASU product is better able to carry the load. We use ASU extensively
   here in the Tru64 UNIX engineering group on our production systems, but
   at least some of the engineers run SAMBA to support "personal file shares"
   from their UNIX workstations to their personal PCs.

   Tom

   ---
   The commercial product is Advanced Server for Digital Unix (ASDU).
   See http://www.unix.digital.com/faqs/publications/asdu/HTML/asdu.html
   for details. This is basically a port of NT4 server to unix (and VMS)
   Can act as domain controller to NT4/W95 PCs and offers very similar
   functionality. Fast, generally stable though with some minor hitches.
   ---

   ---
   Having used both I prefer ASDU thought there are times when SAMBA has it's
   uses. ASDU will cost you in client access licenses whereas SAMBA is
   essentially free.

   ---
   Samba is easy to install and maintain and works like a charm! I think
   Compaq's offering is known as the old Pathworks or its newer name ASDU.
   That would cost money, Samba's free and is awesome. Go for Samba!
   ---

   ---
   Compaq supports a product called "Advanced Server for Unix," which is
   based on Microsoft Windows NT Server code ported by AT&T to System V and
   then modified by Compaq for Tru64 Unix. Since it contains proprietary
   Microsoft code, it can function as a PDC or BDC. Other than "playing" with
   a demonstration version, I have no real experience. It seems to work well,
   but I didn't really test it much, since Samba did everything we needed for
   considerably less money. ;-)

   If you need more information, visit http://www.samba.org/ , the official
   Samba web site.
   ---

 
Received on Wed Feb 02 2000 - 18:47:22 NZDT

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