Is there any software or even hidden linux distributions that are similar in how a windows 'domain' works?

ex:
Network Logons
Roaming Profiles

I've been looking extremly hard trying to find something that remotely replicates a network logon on a nix* box and haven't even come close

I hate windows, but I can't seem to find a way to make the local machine logons go use a server with 'usernames/passwords'

That doesn't explain much, if anything at all.

I know samba can be used as a PDC

But I'm talking about workstations, changing the init 5 login, into a network login

a network username and password.

Is this of any help?

It was one of the many suggestions from this search.

Google for Linux has a wealth of pages.

This is not what I was asking for

Here's a better question.

How can you change gdm to login over a network.

I'm converting a Windows domain into linux. And I need to figure out how to turn my linux workstations, into network logins.

Users should not login locally. Users should login through gdm, where a 'server' authenticates their user/pass.

Read it, still requires local logins.

Is there anyway to make gdm into a remote login client maybe ?

Then everything could be setup on 1 machine..

YES, you can.

You have to set the system up to boot from a network though.

I do not know how. :-(

Google around for "network login".

Then you just run GDM on the other machine.

Heh, I've been googling around for over 3 hours without real luck.

I heard from my friend he setup dumby stations.

They had nothing but video/nic basically and booted to his nix* stuff.

So maybe theres a way to PXE boot to a server's gdm login ?

Are you saying you want the Linux clients to authenticate with a Windows server or a single Linux server? If you are talking about a single Linux server, have you looked at NIS ?

I think what you want is the Linux Terminal Server Project. Here's how it works:

1. Client boots and gets an IP address from DHCP server (presumably your Linux server running dhcpd).
2. Client connects to your Linux server and uses tftp (trivial FTP) to download a minimalistic OS with X support onto a RAMdisk or onto the hard drive.
3. XDM (or whatever login manager you want) is run on the server in XDMCP mode, and the client broadcasts an XDMCP request, thereby soliciting a login screen from the server.
4. The user logs on to the server and runs applications on the server.

Basically, LTSP will allow you to turn your workstations into dumb X terminals. This is useful for thin clients, though. If you have fat clients, then you may be interested in implementing some sort of an LDAP based authentication (login) and authorization (permissions) scheme. I don't know of any ready-made out of the box solutions, but I am sure Google has loads of examples. I know that Apple's OS X uses some sort of an LDAP variant to do this. May want to dig around Apple's site.

Good luck!