At this moment we have a Windows 2003 server and Windows XP Desktops.

I would like to replace the Windows 2003 server with a Linux (Ubuntu) server. But it has to run Active Directory without the Windows server. A product like Netserver2005 (AKA Connectux) can do such a thing.

But then I'm facing the problem that this has a price (EUR 899,- for the first 10 users and then EUR 199,- for each extra client).

First I want to replace the Windows server for Linux and after that will work fine, I want the desktops to be replaced with Linux also.

The Windows 2003 server does only authentication and filesharing at this moment. Email is hosted externally.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

how about trying openLDAP?

Hi AWACSone,

I don't think there are any free AD linux replacements, Samba may be getting close but I dont think its there yet. If you are going to replace both server and workstations in the end, you may be wasting effort trying to set up an AD replacement.

The Red Hat Emerging Technologies guys have created freeIPA which will be an equivalent to AD for linux/unix, it's still early days but I found it pretty solid. Basically it does all the painful config for you (kerberos,ldap,ntp,dns), the functionality is pretty basic yet but the roadmap for version 2 looks promising. I ran it up in the dev lab, single sign on to all linux hosts in the realm worked perfectly and the installation was a PoP.

http://www.freeipa.com

cheers,

kbp

Thanks kbp!

I'm going to download Fedora and install freeIPA !

I'll try it and report back...

Hi,

you could try Zimbra. It has got almost everything as AD.

Anyway it depends on your criteria but it has an LDAP-server/mail-server/samba-server and centralized management.

Anyway take a look at it, this could fit for your network.

Laz