Once the market is there for a fully networked up Linux desktop it will be provided. Either as a complete installation or a standalone purchased system like netware was.
The clingers on are going to be the death of the IT model of today mixture if you like it or not. And to be honest its about time things changed.
My lasting memory of dealing rooms and diving under desks was the number of female dealers who didn't wear knickers to work.
Just been having a bit of a search on Linux and its networking.
It appears every thing on the client side is good to go.
NIS is functional on the server side of things.
NIS+ was in development and there is a requirement for it but nobody is developing it currently for Linux servers.
NIS+ is still a mature system and still available on Solaris servers.
http://linux-nis.org/nis-howto/HOWTO/
Here is a link for those that are interested. I have worked with NIS+ and I didn't set it up but it didn't seem bad. We had samba for pc file services and the NIS+ was the PDC for the PC's as well and handled all the login in traffic using I might add a third of the network traffic that a windows PDC uses.