i recently took a project to bring a non profit organization up to date.
the bad thing is that there isn't any money. there is a lot of unused PCs to do stuff with. i already created a DHCP server using Fedora. my question is is there any way that i could get something like Active directory for fedora but not have to register a domain. there is no money for that. i want to be able to lock users out of being able to do some stuff. right now they are running ram-pit on the PCs installing what ever and gong to any web sit they want.

thanks

Look into LDAP, specifically Open LDAP.

You could also look into Fedora Directory server. It is I guess built upon Open LDAP.
For the internet and web site blocking you can look into squid. That comes bundled with Fedora so you do not need to install it if you have got full installation.

Look into this:

http://directory.fedoraproject.org/

You can achive total control of your users by building this architecture:
Samba + LDAP(Fedora Directory Server)
You dont have to register a domain, but can run your own internal DNS server.

You have said nothing that makes it seems as if you would need your own domain name registered with an internet registration organisation; assuming that you don't have a web site that you want to be available to the wider world of the internet, you shouldn't need this.

Really squid (plus maybe something like squidguard) sounds to be all that you need for what you have described; is there a reason that you feel that you need something like AD? I'm assuming that you are not trying to replace some other AD implimentation that existed previously.