NFS is far better than Samba if you do not have a Windows machine involved, and have a stable connection. The requirement of stable connection (cable) is the only downside of NFS.
There is no advantage of using NFSv4 over v3 if you do not need the new v4 features (which most people do not ever manage to make properly work).
Look at the DragonFly BSD implementation of NFSv3 and you will know why they are not ever considering to implement the v4.
I don't really agree with you. NFS is not far better than CIFS
From some aspects CIFS is better (for example in the authentication process, last revision of CIFS is known to be a little more secure than NFS)
But let's be clear, NFS didn't become bad or outdated at all.
And no, CIFS is not specially attached to Microsoft Windows, this is a very common and big mistake
CIFS started many many years ago now as an opensource project lead by IBM and Microsoft, not satisfied with Sun NFS, but later Microsoft left the project and decided to implement his own commercial version of CIFS called simply Microsoft Share.
But the opensource CIFS project kept on developping under the umbrella of Samba, still under IBM patronage, keeping interoperability with Microsoft CIFS implementation.
With a lot of money, Microsoft has been able to develop his implementation faster and to offer a mature version to his customers before Samba. At this time, NFS was still the common file sharing of *nix world
So from this date everybody began to think that CIFS = MICROSOFT SHARE, what is basically wrong, and for some people
M$=crap so Samba = crap
This is a stupid syllogism very common in many Linux fanboy minds (but you are a clever and open minded guy and I am sure you will correct yourself)
NFSv4 is interesting if one want to use acls 4 wich brings a quasi NTFS rights management very appreciated by admnistrators in big corporation in a LDAP context. The granularity is simply marvelous and an admnistrator can easily grant rights to specific user, group with number of options. Those who play with Windows Pro know that. Some trollers on this forum will keep on telling that NTFS rights are a bu...hit...., useless, but we are speaking here of big corporation not of simple home made server. So, ok... le't be serious, and could someone explain us why *nix world developped acls4 if NTFS rights were so useless and bad ?
Linux fanboys long said that FreeBSD jail was useless... and one day appeared docker... very funny !!!
So please, if in this forum some could stop to behave like theses stupid boys...
Anyway, since Windows 8 (or 7 ?), Windows Pro/enterprise versions have an embedded NFS client.
Personally I prefer to use Samba for some reasons :
- Samba servers processes can be jailed, not NFS at this moment. I use to jail all possible "server" processes, and I use jails as "plugins" I can copy to any other FreeBSD Server
The FreeBSD host is just a very basic workstation with a simple desktop as Lumina or LXDE for example to get tips on this forum. This is in fact the main reason why I haven't implemented any NFS file sharing at this moment.
- In a simple scenario, creating rights access for NFS requires to create account in FreeBSD user's database if I am not wrong... With Samba, if you don't use LDAP, you can use an independent .pdb built-in Samba users database, no need to register all the users in the FreeBSD users' list, no need to install and setup a complex MySQL or MariaDB server. So the jail is perfectly portable, and you can easily move the "plugin" on another FreeBSD system.
I find that a little more secure because network users are absolutely not registered in the FreeBSD host, and so nobody can connect directly to FreeBSD even if they use a fu... little password
- And yes I like very much NTFS rights management, as a long time experienced Windows user, and Samba can support it (as NFS)
Also NFS is still the default file sharing in *nix world, there are some *nix administrators who choose to use CIFS Samba over NFS, not only for Microsoft Windows interoperability... as said before, now Windows has an embedded NFS client, so this is no more an argument.