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First Alpha of Public Sector Linux Deployment System
New submitter mathiasfriman writes: SverigeLinux (SwedenLinux in Swedish) is a project financed by the Swedish Internet Fund that is developing a Linux deployment system for the public sector. It is based on DebianLAN and has just released its first public early alpha version. This 7 minute video shows how you can deploy up to 100 workstations with minimal Linux knowledge in under an hour, complete with DHCP, DNS and user data in LDAP, logins using Kerberos and centralized storage. The project has a home on GitHub and is looking for testers and developers. Don't worry, no Björgen Kjörgen; it's all in English.
I'll stick with Microsoft Active Directory.
Microsoft Active Directory is a bloated piece of bad software. Replication failures are common. Performance is dismal. Security is poor.
Can someone tell me one advantage of Active directory? Anyone? Hello?
I like imaging systems like this, but... It needs to be Distro Agnostic, as in just "An application." to deploy whatever Distro you have installed. As for LDAP, and Kerberos, Samba 4 plays a role here. Samba 4 is as much the next evolution of Heimdal Kerberos and OpenLDAP, as it is what Samba 3's "False Active Directories were, and everything OpenLDAP, and Heimdal provided, OpenLDAP and Heimdal clients should expect from Samba 4.
The Fog Project seems to be a good model for this idea.
Hence people calling it bloated. That's not a problem when you do want more than just LDAP but it is a valid description if you just want one little bit of what AD does.
Same with MS Exchange, it's a huge suite and not just a mail transfer agent. If you want the suite, fine, it doesn't matter that it's huge.
I'm sorry, but you got me laughing at this point. Have you looked at MS server licencing at all? There's a good reason that there's a third party "for dummies" book.
Platform integration, easy to set policies and security for pcs, users, groups, and locations. Easy to set up network printer access. Easy user configuration of exchange email and share point servers. Easy to setup patch and application management. The only operating system that did a better job was Novell Netware. Various Linux distros completely lack such ease of configuration and setup. There is no equal of exchange in the *nix environment period.
I'm a big believer in using the right tool for job and there are many places where *nix works very well compared to Windows. But Linux fan boys have to get over the anti Microsoft attitude, it's played out.
Any real administrator knows which OS to use for a particular function. And how to setup said OS to make it secure. You want *nix to takeover Microsoft Windows then create a replacement for exchange and office. Otherwise get real.
If people are just using it for LDAP, then they're doing it wrong :/
Why not just use OpenLDAP or whatever in that case? The whole benefit of AD comes from putting everything in it. There's no masters or slaves, just two way replication partners.
I understand the complaint about Exchange, but it is a HUGE system that can do a lot more than just MTA as you say.
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It's the best tool for the job if you want to run a Windows network? Seriously, it's not like you decide management tools and let your platform/applications revolve around that. This is the step after you've convinced everyone to give up Outlook/Exchange and Word, accounting to give up Excel, PHBs to give up Powerpoint, design/marketing to give up Photoshop and every other bit of Windows-only software they got and your server admins ask "So what's our replacement for AD?" and they're going to ask you if it has features X, Y and Z just like the others did.
My guess is that every argument you just said will be met with a shrug and "It seems to work just fine for us, don't know what you're talking about. So how do we push a group policy to all clients in Linux?" and if your best answer is to write a script to ssh into each box and patch a configuration file they'll just roll their eyes and say "Linux does not have the necessary management features we need" and you've got one more group added to the list of migration opponents. Contrary to the *nix philosophy, I've yet to meet anyone happy to replace one tool with five, even if each is arguably a bit better. Swiss army knifes works quite well in the real world.
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