I am volunteering at a Senior Citizen not for profit organization that has a Windows 2003 server and about ten workstations running Windows XP Pro. We are going to add another ten workstations to our network and I would like to make them linux(Ubuntu)based using Open Office. I have very simple requirements:
1. authenticate to active directory.
2. synchronize files to user's home directory on the server.
3. eventually run windows Visual FoxPro with the existing central database files on the Windows 2003 server. Yes I know FoxPro is dead but that is what we have.

I am very new to the Linux world so I need step by step help. If the hill is too steep to climb please tell me and I will have to go forward with more XP machines.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Well easiest way to get a link client to authenticate against an Active Directory Server would be using the LDAP client and PAM.

Linux client to authenticate against ADS via pam & LDAP
http://www.opensourcehowto.org/how-t...pam--ldap.html

Thats one out of three, I hope that helped a little.

For number 2, as long as user home directories are just SAMBA shares you should be able to mount them on the Linux machines. I'm not sure how AD accounts store a user's home directory but you could probably work up a script that would set it up properly for each user.

Thanks for the quick response. I will give these ideas a try on Monday.