While Microsoft's Active Directory (AD) is an effective play to circumvent the inherent central authentication foibles of Linux, getting the technology synced with servers has been a complex undertaking for IT practitioners, to say the least.

Integrating with Windows eventually has to happen since there is no denying the majority. However, there are obvious open source secure solutions to authentication with Windows - LDAP and Kerberos along with a touch of Samba can go a long way in providing that type of solution. Read on for a devil's advocate's view of Linux authentication in a Windows environment - do you think these solutions match up to what Microsoft can put out?

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