(On the flipside, I've personally never managed to get it working, but you don't need to tell the PHB that :)
That was my impression about AFS; some of it hearsay, of which I wasn't sure how much of it is true. However, I do know that even
I've had AFS working off a Linux server to a Linux desktop and a Windows desktop. One problem I hit was that there seemed to be a fairly major bug in the kernel modules for 2.4.21, which was the kernel in use at the time I was playing. I think I ended up sticking with a 2.4.18 kernel. I've not had the time or the machines to try further. I notice there are AFS modules in the 2.6 kernel tree - I plan on looking at this in the future.
though my own local Uni uses AFS for the file servers in the data centre, I've yet to encounter a single stray Windows machine that's hooked up to the AFS, while a lot of the Unix machines have been. Admittedly, I don't know what things look like in the computer pools.
The problem here is probably the lack of SSO. You log into your windows domain, then you'll need to log in *again* to your AFS. Unless a Windows login can return a kerberos ticket which you can use for AFS, I'm not sure. The solution to this is to have a custom GINA which does the login auth against your AFS for you. I've had the windows client working just fine tho (log into windows, then log into AFS), it works well.
Maybe this is an area that needs more advocacy (and possibly effort to make it work smoother?).
Definitely needs work to make it smoother :). It's a year or more since I've played with this, I need to find the time to look into it again. Daniel