Does anyone have any experience with YP / NIS / NIS+ / LDAP as a central
directory on Unix?
I'm contemplating playing with them for historical reasons.
As such, I'm wondering what the current evolution is for a pure Unix
environment. Read: No Active Directory. Is there a current central
directory service for Unix (or Linux)? If so, what is it?
I'm guessing it's LDAP combined with Kerberos, but I'm not sure.
Yes, that's exactly what Active Directory does and does well, so why shun it? I'd be interested in knowing where a pure unix environment exists, beyond my imagination and dreams that is. Linux is pretty much a first class citizen in a Windows world today. Samba4 can act as a domain controller, but I don't know how practical that solution is, how well it scales, or what kind of support exists. It uses the same standard protocols as AD.
I do dread the day that Microsoft introduces "Group Policy for Linux", if they haven't already. Also, I like Powershell and was stoked when they introduced it to Linux, but I've personally been resisting its use to manage Linux servers, perhaps for no good reason.
Yesterday I read that MS is starting to develop SysInternals-like tools for Linux. They own GitHub. Like it or not, they're not going away. They're going to continue diluting the waters between Windows and Linux more and more. Resistance is futile.