The NethServer team have done amazing work drawing attention to the project.
A strong feature like Samba 4 is headline grabbing and something most people looking for a Micro$oft drop in replacement or supplementary server are looking for.
Like it or not but we like in a world in which M$ own the vast majority of the desktop/server marketplace. Anything that can help bridge that gap is a massive win, and I believe in time will tip the scales away from M$.
On a feature by feature comparison against other distros trying to offer similar features to NethServer, they either have support, or are planning support for Samba 4.
the short answer is no…
if your clients are WXP, search the web for poledit… you need clients joined to the domain and a login script (done many times in the past)
from windows vista onwards M$ changed things (doh!) and poledit won’t work anymore…
The question I asked myself was “if I was to use NethServer to run all my core services for a network of say 25 - 200 users (most of which would be Windows based) what feature would I want that currenlty isn’t in NethServer?”
The only one that jump out at me was a way of deploying Windows based group policies.
Being able to deploy group policy would take away the majority of the burden surrounding supporting Windows clients.
You could then take the average default stack of network services and replace them with NethServer and the clients wouldn’t even notice (DNS, DHCP, File and Print, Firewall, VPN, Backup, Proxy, Group policy) and to a large degree email.
Group policy is really useful regardless of the number of users really.
I would use group policy on a 5 user network given the massive range of configuration options it gives you that are all centrally managed and deployed.
NethServer is doing an excellent job of bridging the gab betwen Linux and Windows from a server and network services point of view. When Windows admins read out a long list of things they need a server to do, I can confidently tell them that NethServer will meet their needs, until group policy is mentioned.
For me, group policy is the killer feature that would aid bringing Windows clients to the NethServer party
@fausp, since you’re a long time SME’s user, you’d know that with NS (that uses templates, fragments and so on, and it’s strongly bound to ldap) it’s not just an installa and configure matter
