Like many people, I have installed SharePoint in environments with Active Directory (AD) many times. I had not however installed it without AD until recently. I have found the following resources extremely helpful with this task and I figured I would post them here so others wouldn't have to go through searching I did.

http://blogs.msdn.com/fooshen/archive/2007/02/01/installing-moss-without-ad.aspx
This is a great article and helped me get SharePoint installed and operational with the exception of the search services (both WSS Search and Office Search).

To configure the WSS Search, you must prep your SQL server and then run the stsadm util from the web server.

To prep the SQL server:

1. create a standard user that will be used as the search service account
2. grant the user access to SQL through the SQL Management Studio and grant dbcreator, securityadmin and public rights.

To configure the Web Server:

1. create the same standard user from above with the same password
2. create a second standard user that will be used as the content access account.
3. use the following at a command line from c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin:

stsadm -o spsearch -action start -farmserviceaccount name-of-your-service-account-here -farmservicepassword password -farmcontentaccessaccount name-of-your-content-access-account-here -farmcontentaccesspassword -databaseserver name-of your-dbserver-here -databasename name-of-your-database-here

-farmserviceaccount: this should be the account you want to run the search service with.
-farmcontentaccesspassword: this should be a different account than the farmserviceaccount.
-databasename: this should be the name of a non-existant database.

IMPORTANT: use the WEBSERVERNAME\accountname format when specifying these accounts.

After running the command above, if you receive an error stating: " 'start' action failed. Additional information: Could not access the Search service configuration database", you need to grant the farmserviceaccount dbo access to the search database using the SQL Management Studio.

http://www.chandima.net/Blog/archive/2007/10/02/does-your-sql-server-look-like-this-after-a-sharepoint-install.aspx
This article describes how to install SharePoint databases with clean names.

http://www.devcow.com/blogs/jdattis/archive/2007/02/23/Office-SharePoint-Server-2007-Forms-Based-Authentication-FBA-Walkthrough-Part-1.aspx
Forms Based Authentication was crucial for my most recent SharePoint deployment because the client did not want their users to have windows accounts. This article shows you how to get SharePoint to authenticate against a generic SQL Membership Provider.

http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=CKS&ReleaseId=7675
After you have your site authenticating with FBA, use this community kit to manage your users in SharePoint. 

My advice to anyone considering running SharePoint without Active Directory is not to do it unless you absolutely have to.

If you find that I have left something out, please leave a comment and I will do my best to help!