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Linux Identity vs Delinea
An honest comparison. Delinea is a Gartner-Leader PAM platform with years of breadth we don’t match. We focus on one thing: modern, Active-Directory-free Linux SSH and sudo governance. Where Delinea is ahead, we say so.
TL;DR
Pick Delinea if…
You need a full PAM suite — credential vaulting, Windows and endpoint coverage, session replay, IGA — under one vendor, you are an Active-Directory-centric enterprise, or procurement requires a certified Gartner-Leader vendor today.
Pick Linux Identity if…
Your fleet is Linux, you don’t want to join hosts to Active Directory, and you want JIT sudo + tamper-evident audit running in half an hour — with the agent kept out of the SSH path so it can never lock you out of your own servers.
What replaces adclient?
Delinea’s Server Suite puts one agent — adclient — in charge of login, identity, and elevation, sitting directly in the SSH path. Linux Identity splits those jobs apart, and the part you log in through is plain OpenSSH. Here is the swap from the operator’s seat:
| With Delinea (adclient) | With Linux Identity | What you actually do |
|---|---|---|
| adclient brokers your login against AD (in the SSH path) | OpenSSH CA trust + a short-lived certificate — no login-path agent | ssh prod-web-01 — your cert proves who you are; you log in even if our agent is down |
| Host is AD-joined; identity resolved via NSS/AD | Your identity is your IdP (SSO) user, carried in the cert principal | Nothing extra — you sign in with the SSO identity you already have |
| dzdo replaces sudo for privilege elevation | lnxid wraps native sudo with policy + JIT + audit | lnxid systemctl restart nginx — checked against policy, then it runs |
| Access rights live in AD Zones, edited in Windows consoles | RBAC policy lives in the web dashboard, tied to your IdP groups | Admins set group → role → permission in the browser, not a Windows console |
The short version: nothing on the host replaces adclient in the login path — that job goes away. Authentication becomes a short-lived SSH cert your sshd already trusts, elevation becomes lnxid, and policy moves from AD Zones into the dashboard. The only thing we run on the box is a lightweight agent for policy + audit — and if it dies, you can still SSH in and sudo still works.
Feature comparison
Delinea features sourced from delinea.com and public documentation as of June 2026. Corrections welcome — email mail@linuxidentity.com.
| Feature | Linux Identity | Delinea (Server PAM) |
|---|---|---|
Linux sudo governance Delinea’s dzdo fully replaces the sudo binary; Linux Identity layers a policy + JIT wrapper in front of the sudo you already have. | Yes — lnxid JIT wrapper, native sudo untouched | Yes — dzdo replaces sudo |
Requires Active Directory Classic Centrify Server Suite joins each Linux host into AD “Zones” managed from Windows consoles. The AD-free path lives in a separate Delinea product line. | No — identity comes from your IdP (OIDC/SSO) | Server Suite: yes (host is AD-joined); Cloud Suite: optional |
Agent in the SSH / login critical path A crashed adclient can hang the host (Red Hat solution 1575493). Our agent ships policy + audit and is never in the login path; OpenSSH validates the cert on its own. | No — SSH login survives agent failure | Yes — adclient PAM/NSS modules |
Authentication mechanism | Short-lived SSH certificates (OpenSSH CA trust) | AD/Kerberos credentials; certs via a Delinea OpenSSH build |
Tamper-evident audit Both produce audit trails. Linux Identity hash-chains each escalation event so the log is provably un-edited. | sha256 hash-chained audit rows | Session recording + audit store |
Secrets vaulting / password rotation If you need a credential vault, Delinea has the mature product here. We don’t do vaulting. | Not in scope | Yes — Secret Server |
Windows / endpoint privilege management | Not in scope (Linux-focused) | Yes — Privilege Manager |
SSH session recording (terminal replay) GA Delinea ships session replay today. We capture escalation events now; full replay comes later. | In progress | Yes |
Time to first protected host Independent reviews (G2, PeerSpot) repeatedly describe Delinea setup as complex and expertise-heavy. | ~30 minutes, self-serve | Weeks–months; commonly professional-services led |
Pricing model Delinea publishes no Server PAM price; every page is “request a quote.” Our pricing is on /pricing/. | Published per-host — see /pricing/ | Quote-only — no public list price |
Self-serve signup / free tier | Yes — free under 10 hosts | No — contact sales (30-day trials exist) |
Compliance certifications Delinea is certified now; we are not yet. SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS are on our roadmap, alongside agent and container identity. If you need a certified vendor today, that is a real gap on our side. | Roadmap — SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS; plus agent & container identity | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS today |
Analyst position | New entrant | Gartner MQ for PAM Leader (7 consecutive years) |
Breadth of suite | Focused — Linux SSH + sudo + audit | Full PAM — vaulting, EPM, IGA, CIEM, ITDR |
When to pick Delinea
Delinea is a top-three PAM platform. Three situations where it’s the better fit:
- 01
You need a full PAM suite under one vendor
Credential vaulting and rotation (Secret Server), Windows and endpoint privilege management, session replay, and identity governance are mature, shipping products. We are Linux SSH + sudo + audit, and nothing else. If you need the breadth, Delinea has it.
- 02
You’re Active-Directory-centric and want to stay that way
Centrify’s entire model is built around AD Zones. If your estate is AD-anchored and you want Linux access rights managed from the same Windows tooling, that integration is deep and battle-tested.
- 03
Procurement requires a certified, analyst-ranked vendor today
Delinea holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS now, and has been a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for PAM seven years running. We’re early; our SOC 2 is on the roadmap, not in hand. If a certificate is a gating requirement this quarter, that’s a real reason to choose them.
When to pick Linux Identity
Three situations where our focus is the advantage:
- 01
You don’t want your PAM agent in the SSH path
A crashed
adclientcan hang a Linux host (Red Hat solution 1575493). Our agent ships policy and audit; it is never in the login path. If it dies, OpenSSH still validates your cert and you keep your access. SSH availability is a hard architectural rule for us, not a setting. - 02
You run Linux and don’t want to join it to Active Directory
Identity comes straight from your IdP over OIDC/SSO — no AD join, no Zones, no Windows consoles in the loop. Cloud-native and cross-cloud fleets are the home turf the legacy model fights against.
- 03
You want to be governed in 30 minutes, with a price you can read
Self-serve install, free under 10 hosts, transparent per-host pricing published on /pricing/ — not a weeks-long, professional-services-led deployment behind a “request a quote” wall.
Migrating from Delinea / Centrify
Moving off Server Suite is mostly a matter of removing the AD-join dependency: you point sshd at our CA public key, install the Linux Identity agent for policy and audit, define your roles in the dashboard against your IdP groups, and replace dzdo habits with lnxid. Because authentication is plain OpenSSH cert validation, hosts can run both during a cutover window.
Considering a migration?
Email mail@linuxidentity.com with your host count and whether your fleet is AD-joined today. We’ll send a migration checklist and schedule a 30-minute call if it helps.
Still deciding?
Request a demo and we’ll help you figure out which tool fits. If Delinea is genuinely the better fit for your estate, we’ll say so.