Hi All,

I am currently in the process of moving a small number of users from locked down xp machines onto locked down Linux machines, I haven't decided which flavor to use yet however, ideas welcome.

Currently I have a AD Domain with Windows Server 2003 and will be hooking the Linux machines up to that to control their user accounts.

What I really want to know is if I could set up a Linux server to lock down specific machines similar to the Windows Group Policy on the Domain, that way it saves doing each machine individually? In understand I could do one machine then image it but the hardware in some machines is quite differrent which can often lead to sisues.

any help appreciated.

Yes, it can be done. Google this: windows linux active directory ldap.

What Microsoft calls "Active Directory," the rest of the world calls LDAP. (Although not exactly the same, they're close.) Linux has a very unique feature called "PAM = Pluggable Authentication Modules" which sits at the heart of all authentication-related processing in the system and which can be expanded to cover other things. Between these two technologies, Linux can be made to respect the policies that govern your Windows systems, in lieu of its native, "Unix-ish" things.

I said "Google this," meaning also "search this site," because there is a great deal of authoritative material that has already been written on the subject ... including some by Microsoft.

You won't get a 100%-map to what Windows provides, but you can go a long way towards it.

Windows AD is like a fork of LDAP. The biggest difference is it's a bit harder to learn/use LDAP, but it gives you more possibilities (eg. easier to script something for LDAP).

Might even consider distributed desktops. 2X.com has a way as well as others.

Many distro's offer a kiosk mode.