What do i need as an admin to run Linux in an enterprise setting?

82

I have played with Linux for a very long time now. I think it was about 1996 i started using it fulltime as my home desktop. 2001 i got a job as an admin managing about 400 users on 70 old desktops against various Linux servers.

Now i manage about 600 computers and 1400 users with mostly Linux on the backend and windows on the desktops. This is my wishlist as and admin after having worked with K12ltsp, SUSE, RedHat, Ubuntu desktops, servers and Windows.

 This is my personal wishlist:

 Profil/policy handling in Linux is really pretty straight forward. What i feel a lack for is more work on Sabayon which from my viewpoint is much better than anything else on the market right now.  Simpler use of Sabayon and more work on getting it setup correctly for getting profiles from a remote server would make policy handling in Linux much easier than in other OS. 

A better simpler way of sharing files between a linux server and a linux client.  Right now all work seems to be on making it easier to connect to a Windows world and nothing at all in making it easier to use Linux.  This is a big drawback that makes it much less interesting running Linux desktops. 

 More work on integrating those stuff with LDAP would go miles for making a Linux desktop very compelling in a bigger network. 

Alltogether i feel most companies concentrate on managing Windows boxes from Linux  instead of making the combination of Linux servers and desktops compelling.  I think thats a big mistake of both RedHat and Novell. Admins like me already have a really tight schedule but often pretty good influence on the spending budget. If im a pure Windows admin and my boss asks me to trial Linux on the desktop i will go bonkers from trying to setup NFS, LDAP, /etc/skel and whatnot. I can make this happen by myself but im very sure most admins cant and dont want to either.

Some commercial products exists but the ones i have tried has been buggy or only supports one single Linux distribution etc.

 Dont know if i make any sense whatsoever here but there you got it. Its a pretty short list compared to the one i have for the Windows boxes i manage, that list is a mile long.