Slashdot Mirror
Active Directory Comes To Linux With Samba 4
Da Massive writes in with another possible answer to a recent Ask Slashdot about FOSS replacements for Microsoft AD server. "Enterprise networks now have an alternative choice to Microsoft Active Directory (AD) servers, with the open source Samba project aiming for feature parity with the forthcoming release of version 4, according to Canberra-based Samba developer Andrew Bartlett. Speaking at this year's linux.conf.au Linux and open source conference in Hobart, Bartlett said Samba 4 is aiming to be a replacement for AD by providing a free software implementation of Microsoft's custom protocols. Because AD is 'far more than LDAP and Kerberos,' Bartlett said, Samba 4 is not only about developing with Microsoft's customization of those protocols, it is also about moving the project beyond just providing an NT 4 compatible domain manager."
Whether you agree with it or not, Linux has a very small market share in the two places it counts: gaming and the office. It's "big news" here when we find a government organisation or a school going with a Linux installation, and until it stops being so we can never consider Linux *as good* as MS or OS X, purely because of usage base. This functionality is an excellent step in the right direction for the office software, because we (as sysadmin's) can build a server that silently integrates with all the XP/Vista machines on a network, without "telling" anybody about it. After a few months of having a stable linux server in place, we can start pushing stable Linux onto the less-than-important PC's - like the receptionist (who can/should be trained) or the marketing department. Slowly (but surely) bringing across all the machines possible we can to Linux. Having AD functionality is definitely the first step. Getting a decent-free Exchange-replacement will be the next (and I mean free in the same way that Debian is free, unrestricted as much as possible) in the chain. Simply put, any OSS supporter needs to make some compromises to get their software into the enterprise. People grow up on Windows, or on OS X (as a rule it is one or the other) not (necessarly) on Linux, so we need to ease them in.
Oh and Linux has its own Directory functionality, it's OpenLDAP. It's just not necessarily as easy to maintain as Open/Active Directory.
My $0.02 AU.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Look, you seem like the average unbiased poster so I'm going to give you a few tips even though I'm going to be modded off topic.
If you're going to defend Microsoft or one of their products on /., you need to observe a few simple rules:
Don't ask for proof of Microsoft malfeasance. You'll just get proof, and that doesn't serve your goal. Read the series of Halloween documents for an introduction to how much we know. It's scary.
Don't ask questions you don't know the answer to. That's good guidance for lawyers, too. You'll get answers you don't want.
Don't ask about someone else's experience. Their experience isn't going to help your cause, and you'll get replies from the least helpful people.
Do brag features, but do it with some understanding of the features. Don't just list the marketing babble. Don't brag more than three features at a time because it's then obvious you're typing them from a list. Do brag features that seem important to the parent poster.
If you must employ "anecdotes are not proof" be prepared for a swarm of people who confirm the anecdote. Nearly a billion people use MS software. Given enough experience, every failure mode is common. Every anecdote is common here and you would be surprised how selection bias draws people with shared anecdotes to slashdot just in time to skew the replies.
If it's allowed in your contract, do be specific: What platform worked well on Vista, how much RAM did you have? What video card? If you must avoid vendor bias, split the vendors by market share and let the astroturfers brag up proportionate systems - if they work. And if they don't work, leave it alone.
Slashdot has a grand bullshit detector, so don't lie. If you lie, the lie is not just going to be modded down - the responses to the lie are going to be modded up and be the only thing that people see, so the lie does more damage than silence would.
There are more rules, but this should help quite a bit for now.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Whether you agree with it or not, Linux has a very small market share in the two places it counts: gaming and the office.
Honestly? Gaming does not count. There was a nice market breakdown I saw not that long ago from AMD, breaking it down into laptop/desktop/server and low-end/mainstream/enthusiast and the gaming segments are honestly not that large. Replacing every Windows/MS Office with a Linux/OpenOffice solution would be 1000x greater than turning LAN parties into LUGs. Nor is it easy fruit - a game requires a lot of software infrastructure, it's got limited actuality (Linux support two years after is a big meh) and is full of bleeding edge performance optimizations. Just to take that college drop-out article we had recently - the school could have said "MS Office or OpenOffice". The DSL installation disc could have said "For Linux do steps X instead". Lots of things in that article was her fault but it's quite clear that Linux could be a lot more supported in ways that would matter a lot more to the masses that a few FPS junkies.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Clearly you havent priced the full costs of a full set of servers (and addons) for Exchange. AD etc. Not to mention all the client licenses you need (CALs or whatever they are).
I am sure there are quite a lot of people who would LOVE to be able to replace a windows server machine with a linux machine running Samba + OpenChange + whatever else
It's "big news" here when we find a government organisation or a school going with a Linux installation...
We're not a big office but we run on Linux. Primary application servers and most of the desktops. So far it hasn't been any big news outside and not a big deal inside. It was a quiet transition, no user upheaval. The best part is we (the IT department) don't have to spend part of our day handling the crisis/virus/trojan/black screen crisis of the moment. We actually have time to document, plan upgrades, and spend time on development instead of serving the Redmond machine. The stress level comes way down.
You don't realize how much time you spend servicing Microsoft until you get away from them. Not just servicing the machines but the whole ecosystem. It's so complex, you need so many supporting services to keep it running right that the Windows admins I've seen are in a constant state of stress. And I think they like it, even though they tend to complain about how busy they are. Maybe it's job security. Don't know and honestly don't care.
All I know is I can go to a partner integration meeting today knowing everything is working fine and, in the absence of hardware failure or massive internet outage, will stay working. That there won't be a stack of trouble tickets in the queue or bill for some piece of software that does...something...that we need because MS didn't include it in the base server package.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Nice anecdote, but all that says is that the IT people in your company don't have a clue. Once upon a time, IT people were just as clueless about Windows / PC's. It's sad really - people call themselves professionals and then behave like that, refusing to educate themselves (If you are not CONSTANTLY educating yourself in IT, you will very very quickly become a dinosaur.)