For the last couple of weeks at work, I've been messing around with Active Directory and Group Policies. I've learned a lot, and now my first rollout is approaching rapidly... and I think that everyone could learn a lot from Microsoft's efforts.
Linux especially, could learn a lot from the functionality in Windows Server Update Services. I don't think there is a better way to manage OS updates across a domain than this.
Microsoft's Active Directory and Group Policy are monstrous achievements for Microsoft. Simply Monstrous. They have come a long way from the 2000 version. While I haven't seen Novell's directory structure in action - everything else I've seen seems to be years and years behind. NIS and plain jane LDAP are basically simple user authentication directories as far as I'm concerned - correct me if I'm wrong.
