Summarised Changelog:

• The effort to modernize Samba's VFS interface has reached a major milestone with the Samba 4.14 release (more details here).
• Samba 4.14 raises the minimum Python version to 3.6 (for both runtime and buildtime).
• Encryption is turned on by default for both clients and servers.

Changelog:

• 4.14.0 (Feature release)
• 4.14.1 (Security release)
• 4.14.2 (Security release)
• 4.14.3 (Bugfix release)
• 4.14.4 (Security release)
• 4.14.5 (Bugfix release)
• 4.14.6 (Bugfix release)
• 4.14.7 (Bugfix release)
• 4.14.8 (Bugfix release)
• 4.14.9 (Bugfix release)

Depends on D12218, D12222, D12223, D12225, D12226

• Run sudo testparm -v and check for anomalies in the default config
• Run sudo systemctl enable --now smb ; smbclient -N -L localhost and check that the service runs and that it is possible to connect to the smb daemon
  • Look for smbd and ports 139 and 445 in sudo ss -plantu
• Rebuild current gvfs and kio-extras
  • Reboot and ensure that anonymous and authenticated user access works in the Dolphin (kio) and Nautilus (gvfs) file managers
• Rebuild ffmpeg and vlc and ensure that smb:// URI playback works in:
  • mpv (used by GNOME MPV in Budgie and GNOME Shell)
  • smplayer (used by KDE)
  • vlc (used by MATE); note that vlc can be temperamental in this regard -- see T8538