Hey all, sorry for the low level question, but basically I’m looking for the easiest way to set up something like a Windows AD. This would be for something like 10 computers at a local church where I do a lot of their infrastructure work. Is also be interested in sound something similar on my home network, but a while directory is probably overkill. And any suggestions on learnings or other suggestions appreciated!
Depends on what you’re looking for? Common logins? A way of mass applying configurations and policies or to multiple computers? Way of doing centralized shared file stores?
There’s no true 1:1 in Linux, but there are multiple applications that can cover all of the functions. As one person said, LDAP, but that’s a protocol that can be served via multiple applications. Samba is one that offers an AD like system that would probably cover SoHo type needs. Things like openldap, 389 server and other can do pure directory/authentication but may not meet everything.
I’m actually kind of looking for all of this. Everything there is currently Windows, but it’s kind of hard to upgrade everything without paying money haha. I was wondering if I could do a version of Linux because as a non-profit we have a free google workspace account. It would be nice to move away from the Windows teat(especially because we have a free productivity suite in Google Docs), but that might be a hard battle to win.
I’d start by looking at Samba then. That’s probably gonna be your closest 1:1 replacement. It can even act as a domain controller for Windows systems too.
In Unix, there is a philosophy of small utilities that do their job well and are easy to integrate with each other. You don’t find one thing that does everything in Linux the same way you do with AD, but you might find something that does most of it.
I’d look at SSSD and FreeIPA, those are probably the closest you’ll get. Put in Ansible and you’ll be fine. You might also look at what Google can do on its own with ChromeOS