I like Ubuntu it was one of the first distro's I started with.
Fedora 7 was used for hands one and studying for earning the Linux+. Coming form a Windows world it was hard. Studied and prepared hard then failed. Studied harder-then pasted.
My question: I would like to deploy Ubuntu 8.10 to an office of 10-15 office professionals but how do I control their desktops from a centralized location.
Windows uses Active Directory for user accounts and group policies etc...
SUSE has Zenworks and other tools to manage computers on your LAN.
I haven't heard how Ubuntu manages computers.
Ubuntu is great on a single computer but beyond that..?
I need to be able to control similar it group policies and WSUS.
Last month I started looking at SUSE because of this issue.

Isn't there a 'Server Edition' of Ubuntu? Have you looked at that?

You'll have to setup a domain controller, just as you would if using Active Directory Group Policies and Windows.

You might want to consider something like these:

Fedora Directory Server

Red Hat Directory Server


Or, here is a list of packages to consider for building your own:

NIS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network...mation_Service
How-To: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/NIS-HOWTO/

OpenLDAP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenLDAP

SAMBA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_software
How-To: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarge...ubuntu-server/

Automatic Updates: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubunt...matic-updates/