I hope no one tries to push GPO-like stuff on Linux. I get where you are coming from, but for example Puppet will give you a lot more power and and flexibility. There is no registry. ”Everything is a file” is actually true, you just manage a bunch of config files instead.

As for AD, you have FreeIPA as the major contender. It works. You can also just join your Linux clients to your AD. Kerberos works just as expected.

(RedHat actually tried pushing management of Gnome via FreeIPA á la GPO. It sucks, because the desktop environment is just a tiny part of what you might want to manage, so suddenly you need to have both that bullshit and your normal configuration management tool.)