Unfortunately, it's not like you can write a couple of
new applications and you're done. It would take some
commitment by a distribution such as Fedora to bring the
small bits together.
Right now, it requires a lot of integration work, but works pretty well.
Most tools are there already, but not designed or tested
to work well together. And it's because very few people
go through the pain of setting up an LDAP-based LAN.
I have set up some LDAP-based LAN's and I think that, although not
straightforward as installing Linux and clicking Next, Next, Next,
i'ts not as difficult as it could seem.
Creating users in LDAP is hard. The usual tools such as
useradd and system-config-users should be teached how to do it.
I still couldn't figure out how to change the posixAccount
password in LDAP without using smbpasswd.
You can use "libuser", which supports several backends, being LDAP on
of then. I'm using
luseradd/lusermod/luserdel/lgroupadd/lgroupdel/lgroupmod from libuser
to manage my LDAP users and its work very well.