Any Tipps on how to do that in a business environment? Preferably from people who are actually using Linux in a professional environment? I’m using Linux at home for more than a decade now, and I don’t miss Windows at all, but transforming a smallish company to use Linux in a way that is remotely as comfortable as the Windows stuff seems impossible for now. I need to find solutions that don’t make it harder for our staff to get their work done, because they are busy enough with actual work.
Simply replacing MS Office with LibreOffice and Nextcloud for example does not cut it. The tight integration of MS Teams, Office and Cloud functionality is seen as a huge benefit there and I can’t just take that away from them unless I find a combination of tools that work in a similar fashion. Using Google products instead is obviously not a viable alternative. Every cloud based solution I have found so far is underwhelming at best and lacks a good integration.
Depends in the business, your role, and how well you get along with the IT department.
In my case I needed a Linux install to do my job. And instead if booting windows just to use outlook I just used portal.Microsoft.com
It got to the point where the only reason why I booted up the windows laptop occasionally was to do the updates and virus checks as mandated by our IT security policy.
I spoke to one of the guys in corporate IT, and since we’re both fans of doing things the sensible way we agreed that I didn’t really need the windows install. He removed it from whatever microsoft-asset-tracking-thing they used, and I nuked the install in favor of an LMDE setup. That way I no longer needed two work laptops.
As it stands Linux isn’t really viable in a business environment. You can make it work but it will involve lots of pain and suffering along with toms of custom scripts and configurations.
It is great for servers but Linux desktops are hard to manage and are unfamiliar to most folks.
With that being said, supposedly fleetdm can manage Linux devices
Any Tipps on how to do that in a business environment?
Simply replacing MS Office with LibreOffice and Nextcloud for example does not cut it. The tight integration of MS Teams, Office and Cloud functionality is seen as a huge benefit there and I can’t just take that away from them unless I find a combination of tools that work in a similar fashion.
You just answered your own question; you can’t. Add in Group Policy Management and Active Directory and there is no windows replacement in any other OS.
Now mix in O365 and it just got more complicated.
If anyone knows of a 1:1 Linux equivalent for AD, GP, and DFS (both replication and namespace) I’d love to learn about it.
I’ve toyed with this in the past - is heavily lacks development. I personally would just use Ansible with SSSD configured to authenticate against active directory.
Only answering your last paragraph. You will not, ever, find a 1:1 equivalent for a few reasons, but mostly because:
Windows quircks do not have to be accomodated in Linux distros
Microsoft has very much encouraged massive software where everything is done in a single application, whereas in UNIX world the philosophy is to do one thing and do it well.
Not sure how DFS works, but with the myriad of networked filesystems available I’m sure there’s an exact requirement match.
Users can be centrally managed in a myriad of ways, but the most used software seems to be following the same X.500 standard - OpenLDAP, FreeIPA, etc.
Machines can be centrally managed via Puppet, Chef, etc.
Company software is managed by having your own repo.
SELinux can be used for incredibly granular access controls, but I can’t see most companies actually needing that.
To sum it up - you’ll always have trouble if you’re solving a windows problem in linux and vice versa. Just for a moment, try imagining a situation where you want to switch a 100% linux company to windows.
To sum it up - you’ll always have trouble if you’re solving a windows problem in linux and vice versa. Just for a moment, try imagining a situation where you want to switch a 100% linux company to windows.
I can’t imagine that; not that it doesn’t exist but it’s rare.
I think you’re missing the point of what I’m saying. Unfortunately, words are difficult enough to produce for me, I don’t have a better way to express it.
Any Tipps on how to do that in a business environment? Preferably from people who are actually using Linux in a professional environment? I’m using Linux at home for more than a decade now, and I don’t miss Windows at all, but transforming a smallish company to use Linux in a way that is remotely as comfortable as the Windows stuff seems impossible for now. I need to find solutions that don’t make it harder for our staff to get their work done, because they are busy enough with actual work.
Simply replacing MS Office with LibreOffice and Nextcloud for example does not cut it. The tight integration of MS Teams, Office and Cloud functionality is seen as a huge benefit there and I can’t just take that away from them unless I find a combination of tools that work in a similar fashion. Using Google products instead is obviously not a viable alternative. Every cloud based solution I have found so far is underwhelming at best and lacks a good integration.
Serious answers appreciated.
Depends in the business, your role, and how well you get along with the IT department.
In my case I needed a Linux install to do my job. And instead if booting windows just to use outlook I just used portal.Microsoft.com
It got to the point where the only reason why I booted up the windows laptop occasionally was to do the updates and virus checks as mandated by our IT security policy.
I spoke to one of the guys in corporate IT, and since we’re both fans of doing things the sensible way we agreed that I didn’t really need the windows install. He removed it from whatever microsoft-asset-tracking-thing they used, and I nuked the install in favor of an LMDE setup. That way I no longer needed two work laptops.
As it stands Linux isn’t really viable in a business environment. You can make it work but it will involve lots of pain and suffering along with toms of custom scripts and configurations.
It is great for servers but Linux desktops are hard to manage and are unfamiliar to most folks.
With that being said, supposedly fleetdm can manage Linux devices
You just answered your own question; you can’t. Add in Group Policy Management and Active Directory and there is no windows replacement in any other OS.
Now mix in O365 and it just got more complicated.
If anyone knows of a 1:1 Linux equivalent for AD, GP, and DFS (both replication and namespace) I’d love to learn about it.
Friends don’t let friends use DFS
Seriously though it is prone to combustion
Distributed File System?
https://www.purestorage.com/knowledge/what-is-microsoft-dfs.html
That’s… that’s what I said.
When has DFS caught on fire?
https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/windows_integration_guide/sssd-gpo
https://canonical.com/blog/new-active-directory-integration-features-in-ubuntu-22-04-part-3-privilege-management
https://dmulder.github.io/group-policy-book/intro.html
https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Group_Policy
https://docs.delinea.com/online-help/server-suite/eval/nix-eval/configuring-the-basic-evaluation-environment/deploying-group-policies-to-unix-computers.htm
https://jumpcloud.com/platform/mdm
I’ve toyed with this in the past - is heavily lacks development. I personally would just use Ansible with SSSD configured to authenticate against active directory.
Only answering your last paragraph. You will not, ever, find a 1:1 equivalent for a few reasons, but mostly because:
Users can be centrally managed in a myriad of ways, but the most used software seems to be following the same X.500 standard - OpenLDAP, FreeIPA, etc.
Machines can be centrally managed via Puppet, Chef, etc.
Company software is managed by having your own repo.
SELinux can be used for incredibly granular access controls, but I can’t see most companies actually needing that.
To sum it up - you’ll always have trouble if you’re solving a windows problem in linux and vice versa. Just for a moment, try imagining a situation where you want to switch a 100% linux company to windows.
FreeIPA only really covers authentication and authorization. It also don’t work well for remote devices such as someone’s work device at home.
To properly manage a fleet of Linux devices you need some way of keeping all devices configured the same
Ok, so, no. There’s nothing that exists that’s a 1:1 for Active Directory and the services that come along with it.
This is why companies aren’t switching to Linux in mass.
OpenLDAP does.
There’s not much to replace GPOs, but you can conditionally provision most settings on NixOS. Would be nice to build an MDM around Nix.
I can’t imagine that; not that it doesn’t exist but it’s rare.
I think you’re missing the point of what I’m saying. Unfortunately, words are difficult enough to produce for me, I don’t have a better way to express it.
That it doesn’t exist?
Nextcloud has Nextcloud Talk, and you could add the Collabora or OnlyOffice plugins. There you have it all.
Nextcloud is such a pain in the ass. I would never deploy it in production due to its monolithic design
Been using it for years without trouble.
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