# Linux desktop and linux server, but how about user auth?

## mvip

With the Desktop improvements of the latest releases of Ubuntu Desktop I'm seriously considering migrating on of the offices I administrate completely over to Linux. All the software that is not available for Linux will run under Wine, so no problems as far as that is concerned. 

My thoughts is to install a server with Gentoo, and then Ubuntu Desktop on the clients (a handful of them). The only thing I really need from the server is to share files, but I would also like to have central user management. 

Now, as far as I know, there are two ways to go when it comes to central user authentication; Kerberos or Samba w/ PDC. Kerberos seems to be the hardcore Unix-way to do it, while Samba PDC is more like a mixed-enviroment solution. Both of these solutions may use OpenLDAP as a backend, which is great. And as for the file-sharing, I guess NFS goes with Kerberos, while obviously Samba takes care of the Samba file-sharing.

What I really want to know is what kind of experience people have when it comes to this. Which is the most 'optimal' way to go, and what would work with the least amount of tweaking/hacking?

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## Master Shake

I'm not positive, but SElinux does have a lot of what you want.  Its a pain to implement though IMHO.

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## mvip

 *Master Shake wrote:*   

> I'm not positive, but SElinux does have a lot of what you want.  Its a pain to implement though IMHO.

 

Could you explain a bit further on how SELinux could solve this. I can't see how it would solve this problem.

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## timeBandit

There's also NIS (Network Information Service, formerly known as "Yellow Pages") which is another traditional UNIX alternative that relatively simple to set up and maintain.

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## mvip

 *timeBandit wrote:*   

> There's also NIS (Network Information Service, formerly known as "Yellow Pages") which is another traditional UNIX alternative that relatively simple to set up and maintain.

 

Good point. Forgot about that one.

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