DOMAIN vs WORKGROUP

[Torsten Curdt]

I am not sure if this is the correct mailling list - please bear with me...

I am looking for a possible mixture of DOMAIN and WORKGROUP mode.
And I am wondering if this possible at all:

Example: imagine you have linux boxes with local accounts but with PAM
settings that will authenticate against a single server. I want to have 
something similar with windows workstations.

I want all w2k workstations to have only local accounts (with local profiles 
etc) but the authentication come from an external source (preferable) samba.

Now, what are the options?

a) running in WORKGROUP mode
but tell windows to authenticate against another machine in the WORKGROUP. No 
idea how to achieve that - doubt it is possible at all (is it)?

b) running in DOMAIN mode
but force all windows workstations not to load/save their profiles to the PDC. 
I assume this is the way to go?! It's not exactly the same - but comes close 
to what I need...

c)?

Any comments are appreciated.
If this is considered OT a private mail will do ;-)

Thanks
--
Torsten