Ubuntu Domain Server

[Christopher Chan]

John Moser wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Chan Chung Hang Christopher
> <christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk> wrote:
>   
>> Shentino wrote:
>>     
>>> My first impression is that it's something to look into.
>>>
>>>       
>> Disk images? Give me a break. Disk images (a feature that Windows Server
>> does not have) will make this the laughing stock of the IT world. There
>> is a reason by Windows Server offers automatic remote installation of
>> workstations and not creation of disk images. It is completely
>> impractical and impossible if you include all the various software that
>> may need installing on the workstation. Even I do not ghost the hundreds
>>     
>
> ... what?
>
> When I went to school, they had Altris, which would routinely blast
> out disk images (yes, from Norton Ghost) to a list of desktops that
> were malfunctioning.  Each type of class had its own installation
> (programming class, library, networking class, general IT study class
> that would have to have ALL the software from Word to Visual C++), so
> there were about a dozen disk images.
>   

In an era when there was no such thing as remote installation services 
ghost was the next best thing. On the Linux side of things we have the 
debian-installer supporting remote installation and Redhat's anaconda's 
kickstart supporting remote installation. None of them offer disk 
images. Why do you think that is the case?

> Every corporate environment I've been in has had GP Desktop, GP
> Laptop, and then departmentalized images.  Phone support had their own
> stuff, etc; but if you were i.e. IT or a general consultant or
> something where you may need some software but not other software and
> whatnot, you got an image that had the basics on it.  Visual Studio
> licenses are expensive, so people got Microsoft Office and then if
> they did C# development they got that part installed and if they did
> VB.NET dev they got that part installed, and if they needed Access (a
> $50 upgrade probably; for individuals it's a $300 upgrade) they got
> that, after filing for approval.
>
> There's a lot of "we need to install a base OS with our Anti-virus,
> system management, and custom software all installed, with Microsoft
> Office already" going on out there, with IT basically loading a base
> image with all the "usual" software installed and then locally
> installing or remotely pushing/publishing the rest.  Hell, there's
> even the push/publish thing in Active Directory, where you lay out
> that users in $OU get $SOFTWARE and when they log on it's made
> available to them, and when they click the icon on the desktop it
> automagically installs for you.
>   

You snipped out the part where I said:

'I love the part about auditing and centralized management of software

being features that Windows does not have. Ever heard of System 
Management Server? Wait, that thing is ancient. Ever heard of System 
Configuration Center Manager? Auditing, software management, patch 
management, all there. Even without buying that, you can already push 
software packages via group policy.'


The last sentence here talks about push/publish software in Active 
Directory.
> So, stripped base image, custom software, categorized USERS,
> everything handled on-the-fly.
>   

Nice base image. Need to change the computer name for each box. How 
convenient.


Flip, what we really need is a decent, group based, desktop management 
system for Linux like kiosktool did for KDE 3.5.x. While you guys are 
at, please make that a blooming priority. I got really burned by the 
latest Ubuntu distros. I should probably look at the latest Debian 
stable instead.