Running Windows applications on a Samba share

I have some (virtual) Windows machines running in a network of Linux hosts. I keep some Windows applications (most notably, WSUS Offline Update) on an external hard drive that is connected to a Linux host via USB and shared with the Windows machines via Samba. Despite relaxing the Windows security settings more and more, Windows refused to run the applications on the shared drive until I made a change to the Samba configuration on the Linux host.

The magic line is acl allow execute always = true in /etc/samba/smb.conf (which is the location of the configuration file on current Ubuntus).

# /etc/samba/smb.conf
[global]
acl allow execute always = True
wide links = no
follow symlinks = yes
time server = yes
vfs object = recycle
 
recycle: keeptree = yes
recycle: exclude = ~$*
recycle: versions = yes

# ...