Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
Yep, specifically we are talking about Samba4, and it is quite a ways from a release.
I was talking about something equivalent, not compatible.
Sure there are LDAP servers and Kerberos servers, but AD is much more than LDAP + Kerberos. It's user and group management - got that /for Linux users and groups/
Right, so it does exist, it's just not useful yet. But it's not as if it's not being developed and tested. policies - got that with a reasonable amount of effort AFAICS, given you don't want to use all the features at once-- but who would? what else is there? Can you be more specific? This just sounds like FUD otherwise.
There is no Open Source equivalent. I very much wish there was, but being even equivalent to AD would be a herculean undertaking and require the close cooperation of many services and applications - something at which Open Source, quite frankly, sucks.
We, very happily, run an NT4 style domain with 2000/XP/Linux workstations using a Samba3 + LDAP server. It works well. we even have DHCP and DNS using the LDAP backend. But it doesn't provide 1/5th the feature set of AD. Again, I was talking about /Linux on the desktop/ being able to provide
Huh? And what are RFCs for? the same functionality. I know Windows is based around specifications not available to the general public. So of course Linux (or any other hardware, system or software that doesn't have MS approval of any kind) is likely not to work with it.
You are basically on your own for user/group management, workstation management is a complete hack job, and you get none of the very nice security features.
By "security features" you mean the ability to configure workstations using policies? As I explained, that is quite possible. Or do you mean something else? Please explain.
(b) AD on Windows 2003 is a very stable service; in general, Windows 2003 is very stable, provided you don't do anything dumb like install non-M$ applications or services.
Odd comment. So you can't use any software except MS software? Doesn't that cut down the field somewhat?
I suppose, but you can build a completely M$ infrastructure. If you go with M$ you usually go with M$ all the way.
That's what MS want, of course. That's their game plan. Deployment by induction. It's like a virus. (Where have I heard that phrase before? ;-) )
I thought one of the advantages of MS was the large selection of existing software?
(c) AD and Linux play quite nicely together.
For now.
The future is always an unknown.
To conspiracy theorists No conspiracy, just self interest and logical profit making business
It's a whole bunch of them. practice for a dominant supplier. The relevant group here is historians, BTW.
I'd point out that interoperability with M$ infrastructure has dramatically improved in recent years, not gotten harder. This is because a) MS realise that people blame them for the problems b) bugs get fixed (by FOSS devs and MS ones). Witness that you CAN use AD via Kerberos and LDAP technologies, verses NT4 domains. Because a) people demanded it: they required interoperability with their LDAP systems. To penetrate those companies, open standard adherence was required b) the possibility of using organizations using LDAP became real Witness the pervasive use of Web Services in .NET.
With specs MS helped craft. Like the W3C specs. Heard of CSS2? (OTOH their implementation of DOM Level 2 and ECMA 262 were fine-- it depends on strategic importance) Most likely they've pulled the same tricks with Web Services and .NET they did with the Web and IE. They'd be foolish not to, in fact, provided they can avoid people noticing because they aren't yet familiar with the implementation of the specs.
Witness the use of WebDAV in M$-Exchange. I could go on.
So a non-interoperable future would be a change in the current trend and pattern, not even a continuation of existing behavior. Entropy always increases. That doesn't mean local reversals aren't
It's called embrace and extend. Heard of that? possible. So it is with interoperability. It's the ultimate logical conclusion, but there are often local changes, the pivots around which the markets turn. And Microsoft is an expert at manipulating those swings.
If one is forced to assume a future scenario it is always best to assume things will continue as they are; they usually do. Like the stock market, right? Don't let ideology or ideologues fog things up - ideologues are the people most certain to always be wrong, on any side of an argument.
Don't confuse certainty with ideology. Hedge your bets and you won't be wrong. But you won't be right either. I know MS is appropriate in certain situations. But one needs to take their strategy and the distortions they create to further that into account when making decisions about their products. And don't forget that shareholders and stakeholders in MS have an ideology, best summarised as "$$$". That's normal, but one shouldn't pretend it's not an ideology. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org