pbis-open VS ubuntu-desktop-installer

Alright, so there's a lot of folks that are really happy joining Linux machines to AD Domains with https://github.com/BeyondTrust/pbis-open --- and up till kinda recently, that was a really reliable, viable way of allowing linux servers in a primarily Windows environment to benefit from AD Domain Login, including things like restricting login to certain groups, etc. From a higher-ed perspective, where the vast majority of systems (at least endpoints) are Windows and rely on AD for SSO login, this seems like an ideal solution.

I would say the same but for authentication.

We have linux servers on our domain, specifically becaeuse there are certain things they do better than windows, and im a tool for a trade kinda guy.

But authentication and management of creds is a hard requirement.

The rest i can work with. We setup Ansible to handle much of the day to day config things. GPO"s might be nice.

At one and for years i was using PBIS, and whatever it was called before it was bought out, forked and named PBIS - https://github.com/BeyondTrust/pbis-open

I liked it because it kept GID/UID's consistent across the domain. But it was flaky for samba shares specifically ad group enumeration. There are paid add-ons that leverage GPO but never went that route.

More recently we are just leveraging SSSD/Chrony/Smb/Nmb to do the same, there are a few tweaks, but its solid. Its actually more stable now.

Some GPO's would be nice I supposed.

It appears ZFS option will be included, it just isn't the top priority and might take some time.

Outside of Google, there are also high profile uses of Flutter. BMW used Flutter for MyBMW (https://flutter.dev/showcase/bmw). An even more interesting use case for Flutter is the one being done by Toyota, who are using Flutter for their infotainment systems (https://flutter.dev/showcase/toyota). Finally, back to the tech industry, Canonical is using Flutter to develop Ubuntu's installer (https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-desktop-installer).

Work done by Canonical with their Desktop Installer, Sonos with the setup sequence, foldable support by Microsoft's Andrei Diaconu, Raspberry PI support and e-ink POC by Simon Lightfoot. The list could go on and on.

I understand there's a new installer coming with Ubuntu 22.04 so maybe that will be an option for Kubuntu at some point.

I can't speak with authority about the replacement Ubuntu Desktop Installer as whilst I'm involved with Ubuntu (and all flavors help each other), we don't always keep up with the technologies we aren't going to be using ourselves (I'm with the Lubuntu team that currently use calamares).

Presumably the new Ubuntu installer being built with Flutter:

https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-desktop-installer

Not sure if that's already in this version.