Linux “has” these things, but there is no standard easy out of the box set up for it.
I can configure an AD test sandpit in 15 minutes (clone a base Windows VM, configure a DC on it).
Linux? It’s a fucking shit show.
Implying that Linux has anything equivalent to AD is like me claiming i have the equivalent of a Ferrari in my garage because i have a bunch of tools and some carbon fibre and aluminium.
Windows didn’t become the dominant OS because it is technically superior. It doesn’t have any ‘exclusive’ applications that makes it compelling. Windows became the dominant OS because of games. Kids don’t care about remote desktop solutions, or active directory. Kids care about games. Some of the kids that really care about games end up being CIOs and CTOs 20 years later, and make the purchasing decisions at corporations. For better or for worse they primarily push the OS that they started using as a kid when they started playing games.
Every marketing person in the world knows that the easiest way to build a large/loyal/reality-and-fact-resistant customer base is to hook kids before they’ve learned how to critically think about their choices.
The biggest problem for Linux adoption is that kids can’t just buy a Linux box, plug it in, and play all of their [Steam] games with their friends. If you want Linux to be #1 you just need to solve that problem then wait 20 years.
The platform that entertains children — whilst remaining viable for adult productivity — wins (even for low values of ‘viable’).
As someone who was there for the days of many different makes and models of computer… Windows became and maintained its position as the dominant OS because of a few things:
Linux is getting there, but until we have something that can be configured by a muppet out of the box in 15 minutes to provide central control of policy and authentication like active directory very few businesses are going to run it. And that ship has sailed anyway, it’s all about cloud and personal devices moving forward.
The desktop is a dying platform, here in the enterprise we have users actively querying whether or not they even need a computer, or they can do everything they need day to day with an iPad. And many of them can now.
Linux needs some platform stability in terms of hardware abstraction, widget toolkits, etc.
It also needs a common enough platform that one could employ someone on the basis of them having skills with “Linux” not one of a million vastly different distributions with their own quirks and administrative practices.
In terms of kerberos sso, domain users and that sort of thing, Linux has competitive options, but as far as GPO, no.
That said, you can use a Samba server to serve GPO to Windows clients… There’s just no good GPO equivalent for Linux clients (that I know of).
There are options, sure. But not standardised across applications and you need to be a rocket scientist to make it all work.
There’s also no equivalent to say, Powershell, WMI, etc.
And don’t say ssh and SNMP… 
If i was using Linux in a greenfields server deployment for file serving i’d set up something like NextCloud, not file shares…
RHEL’s FreeIPA implementation is pretty fantastic if you haven’t tried it out. You can even establish trust between it and AD.
Will check it out.
But having that and having all applications actually work with it… that’s another matter entirely.
For me, the idea is that you just run both. It’s the cooperation that’s important. You have linux things that are easy to bind to FreeIPA, and you have other things that like AD. You run both, admin AD, have FreeIPA trust AD and everything trickles down.
Whilst i’m a pragmatic “best tool for the job” guy as well - the question for most then becomes
You need to justify employing either 2x the staff to get linux guys and windows guys, or paying more to get dual-skilled guys. If/when microsoft change something and it breaks, you have two vendors to point fingers at each other as well.
That’s a significant barrier to business adoption right there.
edit:
playing devils advocate here - you don’t need to convince me per se…
For sure.
The balance is that Linux (I guess, specifically RHEL ecosystem in this case), has a lot to offer and if your AD environment is limiting your potential there, RHEL has made the process of implementing their directory in parallel as painless as possible. And I think that’s worth noting.
Additionally, if you’re primarily dealing with Linux clients, FreeIPA may be a much better option than AD or Samba AD where there are no Windows clients.
Also worth noting, macOS works well with AD and not with FreeIPA, so even in a purely mac environment, you have good reason for AD infrastructure.
… 
Sorry, there’s just no comparison. Linux has Perl, Python and Bash to get scripting work done for starters, and easy access to a lot of other environments in the command line - not to mention stuff like pipes and redirects.
For serious sysadmin work, there’s also ssh which Windows finally implemented (albeit in a broken way, since it boots cmd instead of bash). Most sysadmin tasks are easier to perform in the command line - if you know what you are doing. Which, if you do sysadmin for a living, it’s literally your job to know.
I think the paradigm of “everything needs to have a GUI” is one of Windows and MacOS biggest strengths, but also one of it’s flaws, because while a GUI is nice to have, a lot of the time it simply isn’t necessary, and often it is much less flexible than a CLI tool. But that’s just my own opinion. 
How do people do development for the cloud without Linux, at least in a VM? Is that even possible?
As for Kerberos/AD, I think there’s an argument to be made that it’s dying together with casual desktop office worker use.
Small shops less than <15 aren’t going to bother at all, and medium sized businesses 15-500 office workers big are dying anyway - they’re not going to spend time to care about SSO for the 5 apps they cobbled together for internal use - you’d be lucky if they had 1 shared login/auth mechanism for those.
I suspect TLS+cookie scheme+oauth would be taking over user auth and replacing krb5/AD in a lot of cases.
There’s also no equivalent to say, Powershell
Except… ya know… Powershell, which is now Free Software under the MIT license and runs on Linux.
Both the Linux desktop and the Windows desktop share a common issue: Consumer expectations about functionality and ease-of-use are being established by their phones, not their laptops or their desktops. Operating systems and desktop environments will need to mirror our phones as much as possible or be abandoned. LIttle will be gained by polishing functionality that users have decided they can do without.
The biggest roadblock to “mass” Linux adoption: Most people think of a computing device and its operating system as a single unified construction. While they know that software and “apps” can be added and removed, they do not make a distinction – and have no reason to make a distinction – between the OS and the hardware it runs on.
As long as the device works and applications launch and run successfully, users won’t need to think about the underlying platform.
Installing Linux over Windows is not terribly difficult if you use a distribution, like Ubuntu, with an installer that targets single-drive hardware and the user opts to completely replace Windows. Things become more chancey if the user wants to dual boot and/or has more than one drive in the machine. The concept of “partitions” is alien to most people and will stay that way because most of us do most of our computing on phones that hide partitioning and the file system. (And any look at user forums will find numerous laments about dual booters discovering the incompatibilities between NTFS/FAT and Ext4.)
In addition, happy Linux users often overestimate user frustration with Windows. Granted, if you spend hours every day on Windows your frustration is likely to increase. But most people spending hours daily on Windows are using it for their vocation, where Windows is either installed by an employer or supports tools self-employed workers choose to use. I suspect most home Windows machines are used sporadically and briefly or for dedicated purposes like media consumption.
In the long run, I’m much more interested in having access to a better Linux desktop than I am in how many other people use it.
So does Windows.
People that mock and laugh at PowerShell don’t know what it is, I don’t think. Bash interfaces with text. PowerShell interfaces with Objects. Instances where Bash would serve as duct tape or workaround, PowerShell will scale and function like a robust programming language.
Try migrating 12,000 mailboxes with Bash. Then do the same thing in PowerShell.
Let me tell you which one won’t bomb out, crash, and lock the server.
So… You don’t know what PowerShell is… Got it…
I don’t really think so. No one cares. They just want to get on with their stuff. You mum isnt browsing the windows community forum.
Nah breh she’s Qt/Linux master Raaaaaaaace
I am perfectly aware of what powershell is. However, powershell on Linux makes little to no sense, since it’s a tool developed to cover a flaw which Microsofts brilliant minds created in the first place. Linux use plain old text to great effect, and Python is OOP and damn good at parsing text commands.
Now, if you have a binary-only database… Then Python is a pretty bad tool for the job. But you usually do not have that in Linux, and if you do (like with systemd), then special tools exist to make them into text, if you require it for some reason. Simple as that.
Why are you even asking this question? There are no barriers to Linux, it is the default OS - just not on the average user desktop. But I’d argue that the focus of your question on the user desktop is out of context now. We are not that far away from the only users using an OS like {insert favorite distro}, Windows 10, or MacOS being power users, developers, and serious gamers (until the laws of physics changes and streaming really works).
Microsoft know this, Apple know this, the only people who don’t are those who think a GNU/Linux distro needs to be on almost every desktop so they can say ‘Linux won’.
Linux won over a decade ago. I work for a large corporation, yes Win10 is still the default laptop OS but Linux is on > 60% of servers and we’re now getting to the point that more and more of our business apps are now accessed directly via web or smart phone app - so desktop OS choice is irrelevant. Our next refresh of the desktop environments will start moving the users off of AD and users will authenticate via Services like Azure AD. More companies are also using Google G-suite. At this point the local OS choice becomes completely irrelevant, and locked down OS’s like Chromium and Windows in S mode will become a thing with more businesses.
@wertigon I agree with @thro and @AnotherDev you shouldn’t knock PowerShell. The teams I work with that are still Windows focused use Server Core as their default OS and are being dragged (kicking and screaming in some cases) away from their GUI comfort zones. Server Core 2019 is shrinking the server core footprint further and nano server will be tiny (a container OS). Microsoft have definitely caught up but I can’t see anyone other than big corporations using it over Linux. (When you are a big corp support fees for RHEL or Oracle Linux can be as much as an Enterprise License Agreement with MS - so it becomes a finance driven decision and IT sometimes gets over-ruled).
The context of the conversation you quoted was regarding Linux adoption in the enterprise. PowerShell and WMI make it much easier to manage a fleet of Windows than it does a fleet of Linux.
PowerShell on OS X and Linux makes a ton of sense, especially if you have a hybrid environment and are issued a Macbook to manage that environment.
Not sure why you keep bringing up Python 
It is cross platform and has been for a very long time. You can call Python with PowerShell, and vice versa.