Samba, the leading open-source implementation of Microsoft’s SMB/CIFS networking protocol, has reached version 3.6 with a handful of new features.

Samba 3.6 has support for Microsoft’s new SMB2 file serving protocol that was originally introduced in Windows Vista, there’s a brand new a-synchronous server architecture delivering performance enhancements for this new support, and the SMB2 server is compatible with Windows 7 clients.

Outside of Samba 3.6 bearing SMB2 support, there’s improved (completely re-written) printing support, improved clustered file server support, simplified identity mapping, and greater reliability.

More information on Samba 3.6 can be found in the project’s news announcement.