Some of this seems to just boils down to better support of systemd-homed

There had been a similar, but slightly bigger goal proposal in 2019: KDE for Big Enterprises.

In T17424#308660, @alexds wrote:

There had been a similar, but slightly bigger goal proposal in 2019: KDE for Big Enterprises.

There is a fair amount of overlap but one thing to keep in mind is that most small businesses don't have a dedicated "IT Person" who's one and only job is to handle the IT for business. Therefore, any kind of solution like good systemd-homed support will require a very "user friendly" way to set things up. I mean, no longer needing to use the console to set everything up so that means there needs to be a simple GUI for everything.

On the other hand, the needs for a small business is a lot less than a larger one. For example, my network /home/ and share drives are running on a Raspberry Pi and there is almost no performance hit because it's on a slow server. We also don't need multiple domains or multiple VPNs in a single network. So scaling in this case means going from 3 computers to about 20. After 20 computers in a single location, you are probably more of a mid-sized business with slightly different needs.

There is a fair amount of overlap but one thing to keep in mind is that most small businesses don't have a dedicated "IT Person" who's one and only job is to handle the IT for business. Therefore, any kind of solution like good systemd-homed support will require a very "user friendly" way to set things up. I mean, no longer needing to use the console to set everything up so that means there needs to be a simple GUI for everything.

On the other hand, the needs for a small business is a lot less than a larger one. For example, my network /home/ and share drives are running on a Raspberry Pi and there is almost no performance hit because it's on a slow server. We also don't need multiple domains or multiple VPNs in a single network. So scaling in this case means going from 3 computers to about 20. After 20 computers in a single location, you are probably more of a mid-sized business with slightly different needs.

I think if we aim at supporting big enterprises, it will naturally trickle down/include small businesses as well. Especially since big enterprises could financially support e.V. and our contractors, it would be a better goal to encompass all enterprises. I'm not too convinced this needs to be a goal, though as this sounds more like a string of (much needed) features requests.

In T17424#308164, @Septatrix wrote:

Some of this seems to just boils down to better support of systemd-homed

The only issue with this I see is there's lots of non-systemd OSs where KDE is run (all the BSDs, and alpine come to mind). Now as someone who's made FreeBSD use LDAP for login, its truly ugly long before a DE gets involved, so if supporting systemd-homed is on the table thats fine, just don't make anything dependent on it i guess.

I'm also all for making small business and enterprise KDE work though, and can live with good on distro-xyz but clunky on something else as long as the something else still plays nicely in non ldap environs.

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In T17424#308755, @redstrate wrote:

I think if we aim at supporting big enterprises, it will naturally trickle down/include small businesses as well. Especially since big enterprises could financially support e.V. and our contractors, it would be a better goal to encompass all enterprises. I'm not too convinced this needs to be a goal, though as this sounds more like a string of (much needed) features requests.

I agree that feauture request here and maybe something from my goal T17448: Simplify maintainance, automation and remote assistance for Sysadmin) can be merged into afforementioned 2019 Goal T11080: KDE for Big Enterprises.
I'm not sure what is the best way bring that old goal back. Does it need a new topic?

In T17424#309961, @xAlt7x wrote:

I'm not sure what is the best way bring that old goal back. Does it need a new topic?

Unfortunately it is too late in the process for 2024. We are at this point only polishing the proposals that are already in.

I would avoid explicitly talking about "big" or "small" businesses and just target both

I think there is a lot of merit in targeting/improving business/enterprise use cases. The current proposal is a bit short/unspecific though. A combination of this and T11080 (and also T17448) could work well though. Is someone here interested in writing that up?

Here's a (somewhat superficial) list I gathered from various proposals and other conversations:

• LDAP integration. Not entirely sure what that entails specifically, but it probably has implications for login, user management, config
• Integration with Active Directory/Group Policy Object, whatever that means exactly
• Login with smartcard, FIDO token etc
• Integration with systemd-homed, whatever that means exactly
• Documentation the existing mechanisms for administrators to configure the system, like kiosk, supplying default config etc
• Streamline config manipulation
  • Reduce unnecessary fragmentation in config files
  • Fully separate state from config
  • Improve discoverability of available settings
• Make sure that all kinds of VPN provides work nicely in plasma-nm
• Better Plasma<->SDDM integration (settings sync, Wifi support in SDDM, login stuff)
• Password expiry support
• Good (network) printer setup
• Better network share support
• PIM: Improved support for EWS/Office365 etc

Perhaps most importantly: Gather feedback from existing or prospective users.

I can help with most of that, but I can't champion this one (alone)

In T17424#309982, @nicolasfella wrote:

I would avoid explicitly talking about "big" or "small" businesses and just target both

The needs for a small business vs. a large enterprise are very different; therefore, trying to scale down your typical "enterprise" solution is just too much work. When I say small businesses, I am talking about less than 25 employees. Think, your local bakery, or your small law office, or in my case, a small dental office. They can't afford an IT department. They can probably afford the "IT Person" to come in and install, but that's it. After installation, all basic maintenance should be easy to manage.
As of right now, most of these kinds of businesses are using Windows and don't even have a proper "central server" for things like logging in / shared drive management, etc. Some of them use "the cloud" (like Google Docs or Office 365) to manage documents but there is a fair bit of limitation to that. So some features

I can do so more writing up and perhaps flesh out some use cases.

Does a bakery need smartcard login or LDAP though?

Yes, the needs a somewhat different, but they are similar enough to combine them info one goal.

In the end what is written here isn't all that important, what matters is what ends up getting implemented. The proposal's purpose is to lay out potential areas of work and getting people motivated to find and collect similar ideas

In T17424#310021, @nicolasfella wrote:

Does a bakery need smartcard login or LDAP though?

Smart card, maybe. We kind of cheat in that we use regular magnetic cards and then the card reader acts like a keyboard. The owner of the bakery wants things like the spreadsheet of the financials, credit card information, people's W2, etc. not available to the other employees. But then what you see them do is have "their" computer and if they need to share documents, they would just email everything and then there would be 100 versions of the same document all over the place. I solved it by having a specific "SharedFolder" that is automatically mounted on login. Wasn't easy to set up, but works nice when it does. So the real issue is that KDE / Kubuntu doesn't have a "easy" way to set everything up. An "IT Person" who really knows what they are doing to can do some of it but once you are outside the city, there aren't that many IT people that know Linux.

Yes, the needs a somewhat different, but they are similar enough to combine them info one goal.

I guess it will depend on implementation. The main thing is that this solution shouldn't require a full time "IT Department" to maintain it and is easy enough for a typical "Windows IT" person to learn to use it.

In the end what is written here isn't all that important, what matters is what ends up getting implemented. The proposal's purpose is to lay out potential areas of work and getting people motivated to find and collect similar ideas

Yeah, so I can flesh out the specific features and requirements. I don't know if I should do that here or if there is a different site I should make making such documents.