[Samba] Single Sign On, authentication, and Windows XP Home

[Gary Dale]

Chris Smith wrote:
> On Thursday 27 December 2007, Ryan Novosielski wrote:
>   
>> Not sure why you didn't use Google (apparently, as this didn't take
>> me very long), but I did:
>>
>> http://www.ntcompatible.com/story8718.html
>>     
>
> My experience is that that hack is relatively useless for this purpose. 
> The app may have improved but what I found: the user still needs a 
> local account and all it does is persistently apply a set of 
> credentials that will allow access to domain resources. Which can 
> easily be done with a persistent share, albeit the domain credentials 
> will need to be entered on startup unless the local credentials are 
> identical.
>
> XP Home simply sucks, even DOS with the Workgroup Add-On can interface 
> with an MS Domain better. The Vista Home editions are probably just as 
> sucky in this regard although I haven't seen them yet.
>
> Businesses that license the home editions are making an expensive 
> mistake.
>
>   
Not necessarily. If you have a business where each person only logs onto 
one computer, then Home is probably all you need. For example, a small 
business with only one computer in a department/section or one with 
multiple computers but each staff member only uses the computer assigned 
to them. This latter case covers a lot of businesses - but many larger 
businesses in this class still should prefer Pro over Home for domain 
policy setting.

Surprisingly, the place where probably Home shouldn't be used is at 
home. At home you are quite likely to have different people using any 
given computer and keeping passwords sync'ed is a problem.  However, 
home users put up with it because they usually aren't running a server.

The expensive mistake  both home and business users are making is using 
Windows in the first place.  :)