Password Encryption After MD5 Deprecation
 

Since it was revealed last year that the MD5 hashing algorithm has weaknesses, such services as iso download now use sha1 digests to verify downloaded data. As I recall Md5 was also used for password encryption by fedora, and I suppose that practice has also been deprecated.

My question is how does fedora encrypt passwords now?

The issue arises because after I applied some redhat updates to my RC2 installation, samba is no longer able to see the printer on my windows box. No changes to user definitions have been made for over a year.

Is it possible that a change in encryption algorithms caused this problem?

As root, look in /etc/shadow, and if the passwords start with $1$, then they still use MD5. I believe $2$ passwords are blowfish.