AD looks more like the addition of puppy, a yellow pages solution, and a mail settings wizard. I'm sure there are other features too, but I don't see people using them. Linux has nothing like that. In part that's because:
- It's far from consensus that a puppy-like system is the best way to manage the settings of all your computers, including desktops. Linux has plenty of other tools for managing multiple computers, and almost nobody uses only one.
- Really, what was MS thinking when they joined email configuration with the desktop settings management? (And ntp, dhcp, and etc?) AD imposes a lot of restriction on how one must organize his services, and just a tiny minority would be content with something like that on Linux.
- There are plenty of yellow pages solutions that people like more than LDAP.
> what was MS thinking when they joined email configuration with the desktop settings management?
Selling Exchange licences, what else?
> AD imposes a lot of restriction on how one must organize his services
Preventing machine-profile creep is a big concern for me. Every different kind of machine we deploy is one more different configuration we need to manage.
- It's far from consensus that a puppy-like system is the best way to manage the settings of all your computers, including desktops. Linux has plenty of other tools for managing multiple computers, and almost nobody uses only one.
- Really, what was MS thinking when they joined email configuration with the desktop settings management? (And ntp, dhcp, and etc?) AD imposes a lot of restriction on how one must organize his services, and just a tiny minority would be content with something like that on Linux.
- There are plenty of yellow pages solutions that people like more than LDAP.