You can get around WINS and use DNS instead ONLY if you can guarantee that all your hosts fully qualified domain names (FQDN’s) will be 15 characters or less, which is virtually impossible. In other words, all your machines must have short names like baz1.foobar.com, and you must always refer to these hosts by FQDN when you want to visit a windows file share, eg. “\baz1.foobar.com\some_share”. If you can pull this off, then you can use Samba’s DNS proxy feature to replace WINS.

From this O’reilly guide on Samba Network Browsing:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/excerpt/samba_chap7/

Now it is a simple matter of using the DNS proxy option to tell Samba to use the DNS server:

[global]
DNS proxy = yes

TIP: Although this allows Windows clients to resolve fully qualified Internet domain names through the Samba WINS server, it will work only for domain names that fit within the 15-character limitation of NetBIOS names. For this reason, we recommend you use DNS proxy only to act as a supplement to your WINS server, rather than as a replacement for a DNS server.

From this Redhat Samba Network Browsing:

All servers (including Samba) should connect to a WINS server to resolve NetBIOS names. Without WINS, browsing only occurs on the local subnet. Furthermore, even if a domain-wide list is somehow obtained, hosts are not resolvable for the client without WINS.

Here the page from manual

>WINS stores information that cannot be stored in DNS; >consequently, DNS is a poor substitute for WINS given >that when NetBIOS over TCP/IP is used, Windows clients >are designed to use WINS.”
You may think it is because of windows client was designed in such way. But let’s go further

>”Use of raw SMB over TCP/IP (No NetBIOS layer) can be >done only with Active Directory domains. Samba is not an >Active Directory domain controller: ergo, it is not >possible to run Samba as a domain controller and at the >same time not use NetBIOS.”
Here we have Samba designed in such way that it can not work without NetBIOS for windows clients. But wait read next thing

>”It is possible to operate Samba-3 without NetBIOS over >TCP/IP. If you do this, be warned that if used outside of >MS ADS, this will forgo network browsing support.”
Here we see that Samba can work without NetBIOS. But

>”Use of WINS (either Samba WINS or MS Windows NT Server >WINS) is highly recommended.”

So, you can choose anything you want – windows clients need to use NetBIOS or Samba need to use NetBIOS or they both do not need to use NetBIOS, but it is highly recommended for unknown reason.

All what I am saying that if you read the manual – using NetBIOS and WINS is not an option but requirements where reason for it is unknown!

Where did I ask about reasons to use Samba?

“Regarding beer: we will have some sometime”
If I will die waiting for you that will be your fault!

Regarding me: I am not nurvous, it is just you who is interested in the subject and do not want to go and RTFM. And I am not giving a lecture, instead I am trying to tell you that in most of the cases there is no mandatory things, they are optional (it is always good to give the alternative). In addition I tried to answer the question why one can use Samba instead of or in addition to Windows server of this kind.

Regarding beer: we will have some sometime ;)

This is what I just wanted to know.

This just gives you an alternative to MS Windows DC and AD. As from my side – I prefer working with Samba on Linux instead of Windows because I get the next benefits:
1. TCO
2. Ease of administration in all the ways (migration, update, general tasks)
3. It fits better in my environment since I am running other servers on Linux
4. I get more control over it even when working remotly.
5. Samba does everything I need (although it does not do some Windows features, whatever it does is more than enough for most of my purposes)

NetBIOS
1.Old
2.Unsecured
3.Limited
Not recommended to use, unless there is serious reason

Wins
1.Old
2.Limite
3.Not required
Not recommended to use

Serious reason to use in Samba?