Microsoft engineer walks into my room. we need to join your laptop to the domain, as part of the migration and upgrade company policy. so I give the guy my laptop. The guy has an agonizing look on his face! He goes. This is linux! Mind you all this time am nodding and bouncing on my chair. The guy bolts from my room, as if he was going to report direct to Bill Gates. Apparently the dev team was left out in the whole migration plan!

i don't belive this. Many guys at microsoft use linux and mac

wow!! now we are supposed to believe in rants too!? lol.

@liverreich Linux won't be affected by windows group policy objects

Hmm. I believe it is possible to implement Microsoft policies on Linux at least somewhat.
I recall Mandriva did boast something *like* that amongst their (commercial?) features..

Now as you probably guessed, it's been awhile since I've touched even AD..
However I'm fairly sure that Samba4 does provide a great deal of what's needed..
If not, then perhaps some kerberos compability *might* be useful.. :)

Just my thoughts though, don't credit me on it.. :)

FreeIPA which is the open source version of Redhat IDM (Identity Management) can provide a good level of Linux authentication and policy management along with good integration with full AD integration in the note recent versions