Any tools like Jamf Pro for managing Ubuntu desktop systems?

[sdagley]

Anyone ever researched a management tool like Jamf Pro for Linux systems? Specifically Ubuntu LTS desktop systems? Main interests are the ability to automate deployment of a standard set of tools on top of a base OS install. Being able to automate app installation/update would also be a welcome feature.

[zetaomegagon]

Do you need GUI? Because there are many without GUI.

With GUI

• Canonical Landscape, and
• Cockpit

come to mind.

Without GUI

• Salt
• Chef
• Ansible
• Puppet

Off the top of my head.

You can also do automated image builds and deploy, basically, in any way you see fit. Beauty of open source.

[sdagley]

@zetaomegagon Thanks for the Landscape reference. I didn't notice that one before, and that Canonical offers enterprise support. RHEL is the preferred flavor of *nix for this org, so a tool that did both would be preferable, but a commercial product is a requirement.

[zetaomegagon]

@sdagley Ok, didn't know your experience with Linux. Sorry if my message came out the wrong way...wasn't thinking. I forgot that Ansible enterprise support is through Red Hat. I know that at least Puppet and Chef provide enterprise support that is distro agnostic. It also looks like some of the config/orchestration managers have GUI at enterprise level. I just threw in Cockpit, but it is useful for managing back end linux containers/machines. I use it for managing a box that hosts some lxd containers running CUPS and Google Cloud Print Connector. It's simplistic, but a breeze to setup.

Landscape, I'd assume would be pretty drop-in, though. However, I don't use it and don't know your explicit use case(s).

I'll keep my eyes peeled.

[sdagley]

@zetaomegagon No, I appreciate the response(s), and Canonical's Landscape product could well be exactly what's needed. My experience with Linux proper (to distinguish from the "Mac is really just Linux" mis-type) is primarily related to setting up servers for Jamf related hosting. I don't do that often enough to have more automation than base server OS templates on my ESXi server. My mistake was acknowledging some limited Ubuntu server experience when the team tapped with investigating Ubuntu desktop support asked. The qualifiers "limited" and "server" unfortunately didn't discourage them from believing I was the person they should direct questions to. :-)

[zetaomegagon]

The qualifiers "limited" and "server" unfortunately didn't discourage them from believing I was the person they should direct questions to.

It's amazing how quickly any knowledge about technology makes one a sudden expert. Fun times!

[astrugatch]

If you want a GUI with Puppet, Chef or Salt you can use Foreman.