On 26 September 2011 19:48, Bruno Girin <[email protected]> wrote: > On 26/09/11 14:50, Alan Bell wrote: >> >> On 26/09/11 14:46, Matthew Daubney wrote: >>> >>> Full LDAP integration (not just auth), complete with some kind of >>> "workgroup manager"-esque app to control permissions/access on groups >>> of machines and allow things like remote desktop as policy. Seems to >>> be one of the major things that would stop SME take up of Ubuntu. >>> (i.e. I see it on practically every mac/windows network when I go on >>> site visits to SME type companies) >>> >>> -Matt Daubney >>> >> ooh yes I would like that too. In fact what I would really like is you >> start up Ubuntu desktop and the first thing it says is "where is my Ubuntu >> server?" and then it all just works, pulling accounts from the server, >> setting up email, proxy, policies, software packages etc. At the moment >> Ubuntu server and Ubuntu desktop are not very tightly related. >> >> Alan. >> > Funnily enough I've been thinking about how I would configure that manually > for a home office server. I haven't done anything yet but my thoughts in > terms of requirements were: > * Centralised login (LDAP + Kerberos?) so that you can login to your > account from any machine; > * Home folder synchronisation so that a copy of each user's home folder is > always kept on the server (where it's easier to back-up) with possibility to > optionally exclude some sub-folders on a per-machine, per-machine-group, > per-user or per-user-group basis (e.g. don't sync the whole photo collection > on the EeePC or exclude the project folders for the developer group as it's > already under source control); > * Support for proper shared folders (whether it's WebDAV, Samba or anything > else) that can be set up for everybody or a specific user group; > * Everything that Alan said above with possibility to have settings > specific per machine, machine group, user or user group; > * Caching on the individual desktop so that it's completely transparent for > laptop users. > > Having said this, it feels a lot bigger than anything that can be done in a > single release. It wouldn't harm to get started though.
Absolutely. Domains and roaming profiles for Ubuntu, basically, just like NT4. (Just FFS please don't copy ActiveDirectory!) Ubuntu needs to have a proper, integrated, ready-to-use server OS to match its integrated, ready-to-use desktop OS. I've been arguing this for years. Zentyal is pretty close and is based on Ubuntu Server, but it's not all Free. SME Server is excellent but has no modularity, is hard to customise and it's based on CentOS. ClearOS is modular, even harder to customise, is based on CentOS too and is also not all Free. So adopting or copying Zentyal is the best available option, I reckon. -- Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven Email: [email protected] • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: [email protected] Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: [email protected] • ICQ: 73187508 -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
