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597 points doener | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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mapontosevenths ◴[] No.46181864[source]
Its been a very long time since I was a Sysadmin, but I'm curious what managing a fleet of Linux desktops is like today? Has it vastly improved?

When I last tried in a small pilot program, it was incredibly primitive. Linux desktops were janky and manual compared to Active Directory and group policy, and an alternative to Intune/AAD didn't even seem to exist. Heck, even things like WSUS and WDS didnt seem to have an open version or only had versions that required expensive expert level SME'S to perform constant fiddling. Meanwhile the Windows tools could be managed by 20 year old admins with basic certitifcations.

Also, GRC and security seemed to be impossible back then. There was an utter lack of decent DLP tools, proper legal hold was difficult, EDR/AV solutions were primitive and the options were limited, etc.

Back then it was like nobody who had ever actually been a sysadmin had ever taken an honest crack at Linux and all the hype was coming from home users who had no idea what herding boxen was actually like.

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1. Lapel2742 ◴[] No.46183765[source]
AFAIK they use Open-Xchange, Univention Corporate Server and other specialized (maybe customized?) an open solutions for telephony, interoperability and other tasks.

https://euro-stack.com/blog/2025/3/schleswig-holstein-open-s...

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2. mapontosevenths ◴[] No.46185780[source]
I've never used it. Does this actually replace AD and group policy effectively? Does it manage updates properly? Can it handle compliance tasks?

I've used other things that claimed to in the past and none came anywhere close in practice. They all turned out just to be LDAP with some NT4 style policies for windows and very little at all for the Linux clients. It was like traveling back in time to the Windows 2000 era of management.

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3. Lapel2742 ◴[] No.46189257[source]
> Does this actually replace AD and group policy effectively?

I do not know. They probably evaluated the solution before they made the decision.

In any case, continuing to use AD seems out of the question. Relying on US based software in 2025 and beyond is simply not a viable option for any administration that values its sovereignty. The US isn’t even hiding its hostility.