on the updated version, nothing changed related to SAMBA.
depends on your own preferences. There are pro and cons for both szenarios.
From our side, we try to integrate the tools as much as possible right from the beginning, to avoid too much configuration efforts needed on end user side.
Running docker you need to calculate with around 100 MB additional memory usage for the Docker engine. If Docker is failing, all your container will be offline.
On the other hand side, a brocken container could be simply recreated.