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

[Gary Dale]

Chris Smith wrote:
> On Thursday 27 December 2007, Gary Dale wrote:
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> There's always the exception but in most cases I find centralized 
> authentication invaluable. No need to have local accounts whatsoever. 
> Plus it's not just the system being used for login purposes, there's 
> all of the other shared resources that need to be managed. IMO any 
> business with 5 or more systems (and sometimes even fewer) can save 
> lots of time and trouble by implementing domain control.
>
>   
Actually, I look after an office with only two computers that needs Pro 
both for the roaming profiles (they want to able to work from either 
computer) and for the centralized backup roaming profiles allows (since 
the profiles are stored on the server, I just have to back up the one 
machine).

Having said that, there are other small offices where different 
circumstances make Pro unnecessary. For example, a lot of small 
businesses have an accountant come in to look after their books. He/She 
backs up the accounting files onto a USB stick so they always have an 
off-site backup. Other sites have a policy that all files are stored on 
the server so that "personal" files on your computer are your 
responsibility.

Small businesses don't usually have a lot of "shared resources" to be 
managed, so there's not a lot to gain by centralising the authentication 
- everything else is already pretty centralised on their one server.

>> 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.
>>     
>
> I agree, but not for your reasons, only because Home has too many other 
> limitations (only safe mode for acl editing).
>   
ACL editing on a home network? Few home users would even know what it 
is.  :)

>   
>> The expensive mistake  both home and business users are making is
>> using Windows in the first place.
>>     
>
> That we can agree on.
>   
The hard part is getting people to switch over.  I put Linux on a 
computer and people love it. It's getting them to even try that's 
difficult. The "better the devil you know" attitude is hard to overcome.