This suggests that the main thing Linux needs, for broader enterprise adoption, is a much improved "log into something that quacks like Active Directory" solution. Not actual Active Directory, obviously that just contributes to the lock-in, but what else is even remotely as polished and well integrated? I suspect this is the true moat actually. Nearly every actual business has "log into our company managed authentication system and have our communication and basic productivity apps just work" woven throughout the core of onboarding.
Microsoft sure has a lot of warts, but even as a Linux enthusiast, I cannot deny that Outlook "Just Works" with a frankly shocking set of basic stuff. Login for the first time, check your email, hey there's your meeting with your manager on your calendar, and now we can add new events just by putting you in this group, etc etc. There's dozens of little integrations baked in here that a tech enthusiast could feasibly replace in isolation, all of which vanish the moment you turn off the Exchange server or whatever it is. It's way more complex under the hood than most people realize, which is why "ditching Microsoft" so often turns into "Adopting Google Apps", as they have a similar turnkey solution to most of the same problems.
Not meaning to be a big ball of negativity, but as I haven't really explored here... in the FOSS space, what is the equivalent? Which tools are the most polished, and what server backends could be hosted on-prem to gain the same basic integrations with login, email, calendar, chat, and video conferencing?
Amen .. and this has been the case for a very long time. I remember transitioning my startup employer to "small business server" (Active Directory+Exchange) over 20 years ago. Why? Email and calendaring, especially - remember this? - Blackberry integration.
Everyone above middle-manager level lives in meetings, which means that the calendar is a critical piece of productivity software for them, and they want the comforting familiarity of Outlook. Which means they get to impose that on a whole organization.
The company that should be doing this kind of integration is Red Hat, but they've never quite managed it.
The open source solution space is probably LDAP and CalDAV, but as you say, nowhere near as conveniently integrated.
AD integration and desktop management solutions rule the Windows desktop. But not Macs in an organization, which are an absolute pain to manage, and yet somehow persist.
Perhaps it's not enough for there to be a "push" to Open Source because you've been failed by a proprietary solution, there needs to be a "pull".
> Perhaps it's not enough for there to be a "push" to Open Source because you've been failed by a proprietary solution, there needs to be a "pull".
Absolutely. A company isn’t going to create a GitHub issue and wait around. You can’t make service agreements with FOSS. There needs to be market forces to sell this software to corporations and it’s a hard sell.
Even macOS has a ton of goofy workarounds and third-party products required to get that level of ease for logging in with a corporate identity and having everything "just work". It's only finally getting close in Tahoe with the new additions to Platform SSO, but close is not "feature parity" either.
Microsoft sure has a lot of warts, but even as a Linux enthusiast, I cannot deny that Outlook "Just Works" with a frankly shocking set of basic stuff. Login for the first time, check your email, hey there's your meeting with your manager on your calendar, and now we can add new events just by putting you in this group, etc etc. There's dozens of little integrations baked in here that a tech enthusiast could feasibly replace in isolation, all of which vanish the moment you turn off the Exchange server or whatever it is. It's way more complex under the hood than most people realize, which is why "ditching Microsoft" so often turns into "Adopting Google Apps", as they have a similar turnkey solution to most of the same problems.
Not meaning to be a big ball of negativity, but as I haven't really explored here... in the FOSS space, what is the equivalent? Which tools are the most polished, and what server backends could be hosted on-prem to gain the same basic integrations with login, email, calendar, chat, and video conferencing?