Longtime Linux CIFS/SMB3 Maintainer Steps Down - Phoronix
Articles & Reviews
News Archive
Forums
Premium Ad-Free<br>Contact
Popular Categories
Close
Articles & Reviews
News Archive
Forums
Premium
Contact
Categories
Computers Display Drivers Graphics Cards Linux Gaming Memory Motherboards Processors Software Storage Operating Systems Peripherals
Longtime Linux CIFS/SMB3 Maintainer Steps Down
Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Storage on 22 August 2026 at 11:14 AM EDT. 2 Comments
There is a changing of the guard with Linux 7.3 as the maintainer of the Common Internet File System (CIFS) / SMB3 code within the Linux kernel. Longtime maintainer, principal Linux CIFS author, and current Microsoft employee Steve French has stepped down due to health reasons.
Longtime Linux CIFS/SMB2/SMB3 developer and Samba team member is sadly stepping away from his kernel maintainer role due to unspecified health reasons. Steve French was a longtime IBM engineer while since 2018 is employed by Microsoft working on Azure Storage and continued there as the upstream maintainer of the CIFS kernel code as well as KSMBD more recently as that newer in-kernel SMB server implementation. French has been contributing to the Linux kernel since 2002 when upstreaming began on the CIFS VFS client.
With the now merged patch, Steve French has stepped down as maintainer with Paulo Alcantara and Namjae Jeon stepping in as the new co-maintainers for CIFS/SMB3.
2 Comments
Tweet
Specially Crafted NTFS File-System Image Allows Root Access On Linux With NTFS3 Driver<br>OpenZFS 2.4.4 Released With Linux 7.2 Support, Dozens Of Fixes<br>FSCRYPT Sees Cleanup With Linux 7.3 To Open Door For More Features Like Btrfs Encryption<br>EXT4 Preps More Performance Improvements For Linux 7.3<br>Btrfs Ready With More Performance Improvements For Linux 7.3: Some ~3x To ~5x Wins<br>IOmap Improvement For Linux 7.3 Takes EXT4 & XFS Performance Further
Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.
Linus Torvalds Endures A Debug Session From Hell, "Enormously Helped" By AI<br>GNOME 51 Beta Released With Many Minor Improvements<br>Linux 7.2 Released With Faster I/O, New AMD & Intel Driver Improvements<br>Omarchy 4.0 Linux Distro Released With Desktop Shell Now Implemented Via Quickshell<br>X.Org Server 26.1 RC1 Prepares For First Feature Release In Five Years<br>Two Very Exciting Memory Management Optimizations Going Into Linux 7.3<br>Modular's Mojo Language Now Open-Source Following Qualcomm Acquisition<br>Offloading Rust To GPUs Proves Capable Of High Performance With Memory Safety
Longtime Linux CIFS/SMB3 Maintainer Steps Down
Specially Crafted NTFS File-System Image Allows Root Access On Linux With NTFS3 Driver
AMD RDNA 4m Firmware Published For Linux Ahead Of Launch
NVK Vulkan Video Merged For Mesa 26.3
Sched_ext's Sub-Scheduler Support Now "Feature Complete" With Linux 7.3
Red Hat's Tuned 2.28 To Improve Out-Of-The-Box WiFi Power Savings On Fedora
Linux 7.3 x86/mm Lands Patches To Greatly Improve Latency-Sensitive Workloads
KDE Plasma 6.8 Lands Some Enticing Performance Optimizations This Week
OpenZFS 2.4.4 Released With Linux 7.2 Support, Dozens Of Fixes
Wine 11.16 Released With VA-API Hardware Decoding, Better ARM64 Support
Proton 11.0-2 Enables More Titles With Steam Play / Linux Gaming
AMD Posts Massive Patch Series For Enabling UALink In The Linux Kernel
Linux 7.3 Lands Improvements For Voodoo 3 / 4 / 5 & Vintage Atari Computers In 2026
Nginx Dark Mode Support For Error Pages Remains Elusive
Phoronix Premium allows ad-free access to the site, multi-page articles on a single page, and other features while supporting this site's continued operations.
Framework Laptop 16 With GeForce RTX 5070 12GB, One-Piece Keyboard & Haptic Touchpad
Intel Hyper Threading Performance On The Xeon 678X "Granite Rapids-WS"
AMD EPYC 9005 Series Memory Scaling Performance From 4 To 24 DDR5 RDIMMs
The CachyOS Performance vs. Other Linux Operating Systems On A $46k USD Workstation
ARCTIC Fan Controller: The Best Fan Controller For Linux Desktops, Less Than $10 USD
The mission at Phoronix since 2004 has centered around enriching the Linux hardware experience. In addition to supporting our site through advertisements, you can help by subscribing to Phoronix Premium. You can also contribute to Phoronix through tips/donations via PayPal or Stripe.
Contact
Michael Larabel
Support Phoronix
While Having Ad-Free Browsing,
Single-Page Article Viewing
Twitter / X
Legal Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Cookies | Privacy Manager |...