Most Linux distributions come with several PAM authentication modules, including modules that support authentication to an LDAP directory and authentication using Kerberos. You can use these modules to authenticate to Active Directory, but there are some significant limitations, as I will discuss later in this article.
Authenticate Linux Clients with Microsoft Active Directory
Starting with Windows 2000, Microsoft moved from NTLM to Active Directory and its integrated Kerberos authentication services. Kerberos was considerably more secure than NTLM, and it scaled better, too. And Kerberos was an industry standard already used by Linux and UNIX systems, which opened the door to integrating those platforms with Windows....
