Chapter 1. General Information
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## Chapter 1. General Information

## What do the version numbers mean?

It is not recommended that you run a version of Samba with the word "alpha" in its name unless you know what you are doing and are willing to do some debugging. Many, many people just get the latest recommended stable release version and are happy. If you are brave, by all means take the plunge and help with the testing and development - but don't install it on your departmental server. Samba is typically very stable and safe, and this is mostly due to the policy of many public releases.

How the scheme works:

When major changes are made the version number is increased. For example, the transition from 1.9.15 to 1.9.16. However, this version number will not appear immediately and people should continue to use 1.9.15 for production systems (see next point.)
Just after major changes are made the software is considered unstable, and a series of alpha releases are distributed, for example 1.9.16alpha1. These are for testing by those who know what they are doing. The "alpha" in the filename will hopefully scare off those who are just looking for the latest version to install.
When the release manager, currently Jerry, thinks that the alphas have stabilised to the point where he would recommend new users install it, he renames it to the same version number without the alpha, for example 1.9.16.
Inevitably bugs are found in the "stable" releases and minor patch levels are released which give us the pXX series, for example 1.9.16p2.

So the progression goes:

    1.9.15p7	(production)
    1.9.15p8	(production)
    1.9.16alpha1	(test sites only)
    :
    1.9.16alpha20	(test sites only)
    1.9.16		(production)
    1.9.16p1	(production)

The above system means that whenever someone looks at the samba ftp site they will be able to grab the highest numbered release without an alpha in the name and be sure of getting the current recommended version.

## What platforms are supported?

Many different platforms have run Samba successfully. The platforms most widely used and thus best tested are Linux and SunOS.

At time of writing, there is support (or has been support for in earlier versions):

A/UX 3.0
AIX
Altos Series 386/1000
Amiga
Apollo Domain/OS sr10.3
BSDI
B.O.S. (Bull Operating System)
Cray, Unicos 8.0
Convex
DGUX.
DNIX.
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Intergraph.
Linux with/without shadow passwords and quota
LYNX 2.3.0
MachTen (a unix like system for Macintoshes)
Motorola 88xxx/9xx range of machines
NetBSD
NEXTSTEP Release 2.X, 3.0 and greater (including OPENSTEP for Mach).
OS/2 using EMX 0.9b
OSF1
QNX 4.22
RiscIX.
RISCOs 5.0B
SEQUENT.
SCO (including: 3.2v2, European dist., OpenServer 5)
SGI.
SMP_DC.OSx v1.1-94c079 on Pyramid S series
SONY NEWS, NEWS-OS (4.2.x and 6.1.x)
SUNOS 4
SUNOS 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 (Solaris 2.2, 2.3, and '2.4 and later')
Sunsoft ISC SVR3V4
SVR4
System V with some berkely extensions (Motorola 88k R32V3.2).
ULTRIX.
UNIXWARE
UXP/DS

## How do I subscribe to the Samba Mailing Lists?

Look at the samba mailing list page

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