Active Directory Domain on Ubuntu

[Christopher Chan]

On Saturday, November 13, 2010 02:26 AM, Mark wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 3:33 AM, Christopher Chan
> <christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk>  wrote:
>> On Friday, November 12, 2010 06:30 PM, Mariano Jara wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2010-11-12 at 08:50 +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:
>>>> On Friday, November 12, 2010 06:09 AM, Mariano Jara wrote:
>>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>> For the home, Ubuntu is fine. For the corporate desktop where there may
>>>> be policies to be enforced and nothing will do it except KDE3 which is
>>>> no longer on any current mainstream distro.
>>>
>>> Christopher, which distro would you recommend for the corporate desktop
>>> today?
>>
>> ...the only distro that has tools for say 'group policies' is Ubuntu
>> Hardy that i know of but I cannot recommend that given its state of affairs.
>>
>> You might want to give Debian Lenny a try if you don't have to use
>> proprietary X drivers or are willing to deal with them. It comes with
>> KDE 3.5.10 and I believe you should be able to get kiosktool for
>> managing group policies.
>>
>> That is all I can say for now. If and when kiosktool is updated for KDE
>> 4.x, then we can take another look.
>>
> There are other distros that are better suited for corporate use.
> Typically the LTS distros do well for this, e.g. RHEL, CentOS,
> probably Ubuntu LTS (which I've never tried), SLES or SLED, etc.


You have missed the point. It is not whether they have a long 
'maintenance' commitment, it is whether they have any tools that make 
them manageable in the corporate environment. None of the Ubuntu LTS 
distros are with the exception of Hardy but its so called LTS means that 
it is not viable since that only means security updates. Who needs a 
dumb distro that cannot open files most of the world are using?


>
> The main distinctions between the above and what non-corporate
> individuals use is that they are more oriented to long term stability
> than having the latest and greatest newfangled whizzbang shiny toy,
> but if you are willing to do the work needed for corporate
> integration, any stable distribution should work.

You have zero idea what is potentially required of corporate desktops. 
Even small roll outs have the possibility of requiring certain lock down 
or what different people should have on their desktop.


>
> It's not so much the size or condition of the ship but how much
> maintenance you are willing to do.
>

HA! Exactly my point. Admins want to roll out desktops, not first 
engineer a management solution and then roll out. Distros with KDE 3.5.x 
will have a big portion of that handled. The question is whether it 
offers desktop apps that are viable today.