My heart's desire, as a gnarly old Linux/Windows sysadmin, has long been for better management utilities: directory services, user and resource management, system monitoring, and single sign-on that work across a mixed environment.

Something like Active Directory, only without the vendor lock-in, and it works right. I don't much care what's under the covers — Kerberos, LDAP, MySQL — I just don't want to be an ace programmer and have to do it myself. I want to be able to throw Linux, Windows, and Mac hosts into the brew, and not have to graduate from Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn how to make them all work together.

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