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."

Comments

Re:About Time...

[Architect_sasyr]

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.

Re:AD licensing

[symbolset]

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.