My manager wants me to setup a dozen Linux workstations for engineers, but I have never worked on Linux

Posted by BynJohn@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 369 comments

Hi, I need some advice with Linux workstation setup. I mainly work with Windows machines and we have a new project that require a dozen Ubuntu 22.04 machines. And my manager gave the task to me. The problem is no one in my company has done any Linux administration before. I need to install the OS, setup GRUB (I'm not sure what that is still), verify the drivers are installed and setup a remote access tool incase if we ever need to troubleshoot it (all of machines are going out of state so I won't see it for another month). In future, we'll install an AMD gpu. We're planning to give the users full access since they need to install hardware and do all kinds of tests in those machines. So we won't be adding these machines to AD either. I have 1-2 weeks to come up with a plan. Please, help me out my fellow Linux sysadmins. Where should I start? Is there any good YouTubers that explain imaging and troubleshooting of Ubuntu machines? Please share if there are any widely used best practices with Linux machines. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks

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369 Comments

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Thuglife42069@reddit

Download Ubuntu desktop iso. Download Rufus bootable usb software. Insert USB stick to computer. Use program to put ISO file into usb. Put USB into laptop/workstation. Turn on workstation and quickly go into boot mode in bios. Select to boot from usb first instead of HDD/SSD. Ubuntu wizard will appear. Follow wizard, it’s pretty straightforward. Create a local admin user via wizard. By now you have installed Linux. Most engineers do not need to be managed. The great thing about Ubuntu is that most questions can be googled or YouTubed. Join a Linux discord community. Congrats, you’re now closer to a Linux sysadmin and your salary should reflect that in the future. You’re worth more.

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physpher@reddit

This is the way. But some common commands (if you're comfortable with powershell, the learning curve won't be too bad): ls - equiv to dir (add flags -l to list like dir or -la to list all items including hidden) top - task manager equiv lsblk - lists hard drives mv - move or rename things (yes you have to mv to rename something) cp - copy stuff ssh - I recommend using keys here. Scary at first but awesome once you're used to it scp - copy stuff from one device to another. Pretty logical, first location is copy from (could be your remote location!) Second is copy to (also could be remote!) df - shows hdd space grep - find stuff using regex either from results or within files Some command to output to a file, use >> to add to a file, use > to overwrite the whole thing. Pipes are your friend. Simplified, they pass results from one command to another. Use variables for your bash stuff, it's a life saver! Definitely look into permissions, they will bite you every time (some things need to be locked down, some less so and some freely available. Use this wisely) Text editors are pure preference. vi or nano are the top common ones. Both heavily use hotkeys. Learn those, at least the common ones. I think that's a good start? Hopefully you're comfy in powershell as this will be a lot easier to grasp. If not, it's a fun learning experience!

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Effective_Stranger14@reddit

And man / info (or even —help) for a command you never used before

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oxivanisher@reddit

Also: ssh server is not installed by default on ubuntu desktop. Install and enable it with: sudo apt install openssh-server

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dirtcreature@reddit

First question is: What policies, if any, need to be enforced? The benefit of Windows is that you can enforce many policies, including firewall. Docker takes care of any linux requirements and is better to manage software projects. If you have HIPPA, ISO, SOC, etc, going Ubuntu should not be taken lightly. There is no default *configured* firewall configuration for Ubuntu + Desktop. All my windows workstations have pretty strict firewall rules enforced. How about antivirus? Sorry, but linux has malware. M365? Only browser based. Not a bad alternative, but just saying. If compliance is a thing, Windows is king. I just made that up, but at least Windows has some plausible deniability built in. *You got hacked?* *Yes, we have windows" *Understood* Instead of: *You got hacked?* *Yes, we run a dozen Ubuntu workstations where the devs installed it and are root" *I see. Who thought this was a good idea?*

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hkzqgfswavvukwsw@reddit

All good except [ventoy](https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html) instead of Rufus. Just for future proofing, plus this way you can store files and stuff on the dame drive. Ventoy allows you to just copy several isos to the drive and have a nice little menu on boot where you select which distro you wanna run.

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_matterny_@reddit

Do not use root as your local admin account. It looks tempting, but disable the root account login.

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physpher@reddit

Also this. Escaped my mind in my other comment.

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Atx93_@reddit

You'll probably need One more that way you can monitor all the others with a linux system. Idk if using a windows machine to maintain and monitor the linux machines will really work well.

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garretn@reddit

The biggest trick to ease of administration is making sure you buy your hardware with Linux in mind. As long as it's well supported, it'll be extremely easy to set up -- easier then windows, even. As long as it's the only OS on the system, don't worry about GRUB at all. The install process sets it up for you, it only gets a little trickier when you're trying to be tricky/more advanced. Engineers will probably want root access. That's up to you. Chances are they know Linux better then you do. People from purely windows backgrounds often have a hard time getting used to the userland separation, even if they understand it at a basic level. For remote access, I personally use NoMachine, although I believe it's only free for personal use. Big fan since it runs under Windows/Linux/Mac along with being very simple to setup and use.

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Killbot6@reddit

Do you guys have a Windows DC? Setting up Linux is pretty much the same as setting up Windows. Boot to USB, format drive and wait. I believe you should be able to add Linux devices to AD now, but there is no guarantee anything else on your stack will work. I know getting connectwise to work was horrible, and their support was not helpful, but! Our RMM through datto worked well enough.

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Upper-Bath-86@reddit

We also have the Datto RMM agent working well with Linux.

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Huge_Ad_2133@reddit

My strong advice. Setup 13. One for you.

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Finding_Capt_Nemo@reddit

100% - especially on the same hardware. Ubuntu is integrating firmware updates and it’s been a bit problematic.

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Interesting-Buddy957@reddit

> Ubuntu is integrating firmware updates fwupd?

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Finding_Capt_Nemo@reddit

Yep. Far fewer errors.

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nhaines@reddit

Is it? Ubuntu's had it for half a decade at least, and it uses the Linux Vendor Firmware Service that every single distro has used since it was created.

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Finding_Capt_Nemo@reddit

I don’t use it, but users have been clicking it and the intel firmware has gotten broken a few times (Thinkpad P series)

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Interesting-Buddy957@reddit

intel blobs go BRRRRR

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Gaterkj@reddit

fr make your machine at home or something you use linux and force tourself to use it for a month and you'll know eniugh for any sutuation like this imo

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Llowin@reddit

This is advice gold. When I had to support a company that was 50% Mac, this is what I did. I brought a Mac home and put it in place of my windows machine and forced myself to make it work. Also, the linux community is so much more helpful now than it was 10 years ago. I wish you luck on your new learning adventure.

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Arudinne@reddit

If you're going to be expected to support it - you're going to need one for issue reproduction. That's why I have an M1 MBP from work in addition to my Windows machine.

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3-----------------D@reddit

This ^^^

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mrjamjams66@reddit

Big pp?

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daemonq@reddit

Was going to say, make it a bakers dozen.

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Daltoniousii@reddit

An IT Dozen

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ArtisticVisual@reddit

😂😂😂😂😂😂

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Radiant_Fondant_4097@reddit

For real, if you’ll be supporting this it’s best to immerse yourself in it and get used to how everything works with hands on experience. I’ve always got Windows and Mac devices on hand because everyone else flips out at the thought of anything except their precious Microsoft.

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DLZPDave@reddit

What about a managed solution, aws end user compute instances. They provide Linux versions that can be sized to your needs. . Ping me directly if you want more details.

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PMilind@reddit

My advice 1. Choose any distro (ask you colleagues whichever one they are most comfortable using) and just install it by following the install gui. It's literally soo easy these days, you couldn't mess it up if u tried. 2. For remote monitoring I personally prefer Netdata Cloud. 3. For remote administration, a. First you need a way for them to be accessible from anywhere in the world. If they will be having a static public IP, safest is a wireguard server. Otherwise, there are much easier tools nowadays like tailscale, zerotier, cloudflare private network. b. Then you need a way to remotely administer them. Simple SSH (for terminal access) and VNC (for screen sharing) are best IMO. There are also tools like pulseway (paid, closed-source). 4. Lastly, I think you should also consider something like PiKVM. It's cheap and easy. You can basically change bios/uefi settings and reformat the machines if required remotely of you pair it with the point 3.a. that I mentioned above. Note: These are all my personal opinion on tools that I have personally used before. I don't do IT professionally. Just as a hobby. Lots of this might be horribly wrong. Please do consult some professionals also.

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StefanMcL-Pulseway2@reddit

Hey u/PMilind thanks for mentioning us, I really appreciate it - and If OP or anyone else has any questions regarding Pulseway and Linux please feel free to reach out me anytime!

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dfwtjms@reddit

If they asked for Linux just give them the hardware they want and that's it.

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slugshead@reddit

You've got two options 1, Stress out about how you've never done Linux before and ask for training etc 2, Download the ISO, burn it to a USB with Rufus and install it (same way you would with a standalone windows build). Go Ubuntu with a GUI and it's pretty intuitive. Being standalone, you've got a lot less to worry about, teamviewer also supports linux. Don't forget to check if you central AV product has linux support and don't forget to install that.

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Art_Vand_Throw001@reddit

Honestly this. For 10 workstations might as well just do manual rather than spend too much time trying to figure out imaging etc.

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cowbutt6@reddit

IMHO, 10 workstations is enough to justify digging into Kickstart (or equivalent if not using a RHEL-derived distro): [https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red\_hat\_enterprise\_linux/9/html/performing\_an\_advanced\_rhel\_9\_installation/performing\_an\_automated\_installation\_using\_kickstart](https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html/performing_an_advanced_rhel_9_installation/performing_an_automated_installation_using_kickstart)

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technologyclassroom@reddit

For 12, don't bother. If 12 more are ordered, start looking into it. Debian-based systems use Preseed files and they are more complicated to get going than kickstart files. They would learn more at this stage using the manual installer and taking notes.

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thuhstog@reddit

Exactly burn an iso, and run the setup from a USB stick 12 times. You'll be done by lunchtime.

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dustojnikhummer@reddit

Or if they already have a PXE server just drop the Ubuntu ISO onto that.

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dagbrown@reddit

OP said they asked for Ubuntu though.

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dustojnikhummer@reddit

Debian docs recommend https://fai-project.org/ https://wiki.debian.org/AutomatedInstallation

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deafphate@reddit

Kickstart is great. I delve into that when I was tasked with deploying 75+ Red Hat servers within a month. The new image installed the OS, configured basic networking, and registered it with my ansible host. Ansible took care of the rest of the configuration.

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cmack@reddit

That's what it's all about: provisioning + configuration management

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ultimatebob@reddit

For 10 workstations, it might be worthwhile to make a Clonezilla disk image with Ubuntu 22 and the base software packages that the engineers want and then use that image to build the other 9 systems. The process would be less boring, anyway, and you'll have a backup to use if someone screws up their system.

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jess-sch@reddit

I'll take "How to shoot yourself in the foot by reusing unique system identifiers" for 500, please.

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ZPrimed@reddit

Is there something like "sysprep for Linux"? I've worked with Linux servers and VMs in the past but most have been manually built... I started using Ubuntu "cloud-images" a while back but I assumed those have handled all of the unique ID problems since they're made for cloning in a virtual cloud environment, but I never gave much thought to how exactly it's done.

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Jirv311@reddit

I probably wouldn't use this script as is, but you could use some of the commands within for the cleanup process. [Ubuntu - VMware Template Cleanup Script - EverythingShouldBeVirtual](https://everythingshouldbevirtual.com/virtualization/ubuntu-vmware-template-cleanup-script/)

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DrKoks99@reddit

Look for Cloud Init + Ansible is the way to go.

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ZPrimed@reddit

Yeah, currently I build Linux servers by cloning a base cloud-img from Ubuntu, and my virtualization platform allows me to drop in a cloud-init script that gets run at first boot, where I set password and host name and can pre-load some base packages through apt, too. It streamlines things a lot. I actually run a FreeIPA environment (instead of Windows & AD); I could have the new VMs install that client and potentially even join themselves to the "domain," but I've skipped that because FreeIPA-client installs a lot of extra dependencies and I don't wholly trust it for some reason. So I still handle the realm-join manually.

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DangusKahn@reddit

There is, it is called kickstart. You basically cut that part out with your cloud images. All of your configurations you need at boot/build time would be baked in to the image.

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jess-sch@reddit

No idea to be honest. My linux systems are all NixOS with tmpfs-as-root, so whatever I don't explicitly keep gets wiped on reboot.

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CliffhouseGames@reddit

I've done a few dozen opnsense boxes using clonezilla and never had this issue, quite sure I've done effectively the same by remounting Ubuntu VM boot disks in a new VM as well. Pretty sure the OS is intelligent enough to rewrite those files during boot, but it's definitely worth looking into before you take that route.

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Substantial-Fix-8736@reddit

I agree your point would be valid in most scenarios but OP says in a follow up post that these are stand alone workstations not on the network. In original post he says they are testing hardware. I'm wondering if they are just beginning to make Linux drivers for a hardware device.

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Interesting-Buddy957@reddit

> reusing unique system identifiers" We're not Windows

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PhantomNomad@reddit

I knew about hostname but not machine-id. How have I never heard of this before. Then again I may have known a long time ago but forgot.

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Azifor@reddit

What's wrong with using the same machine-id? Don't see why that would cause issues but not confident all its used for.

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jess-sch@reddit

On some systems it's used as a DUID for DHCP, and if two of those laptops get on the same wifi, and the DHCP server supports DUIDs (most do)... Have fun with duplicate IPs.

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Pazuuuzu@reddit

I don't see the problem, they can all use the same git repo!

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BurnoutEyes@reddit

And sshd HostKeys.

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ollivierre@reddit

In Windows land SID/sys prep is a thing when cloning is this is a thing for Linux ?

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Dontemcl@reddit

Is this the same process you use for windows workstation’s as well.

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Kkremitzki@reddit

Perhaps a better way of doing this would be PXE booting the installer and using preseeded configuration, see for example https://netboot.xyz/docs/kb/pxe/ubuntu/

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dagbrown@reddit

That’s good for hundreds of machines. Probably overkill for OP’s dozen though.

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Interesting-Buddy957@reddit

Not really, you do an install in a VM Dump the preseed Re-apply said pressed on the new machines

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Bunderslaw@reddit

Doesn't Ubuntu support autoinstall? https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/install/autoinstall

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axonxorz@reddit

Miiight not matter for workstations, but you'll have duplicate SSH host keys and whatnot

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R8nbowhorse@reddit

Imaging for Linux isn't really that much work though. If you take debian or fedora, it's as simple as downloading an installer iso, mounting the iso, copying a preseed or kickstart file (there are plenty of examples online) into the iso, rebuilding the iso image & burning that to a usb stick. Now, you install your workstations like you'd with windows, just that instead of clicking through the installer, you enter a simple boot command to tell it to use the auto install config and watch the installer running on its own. Ofc this is a very high level summary, but with a tiny bit of google foo, this really isn't hard or complicated.

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Interesting-Buddy957@reddit

As you're rebuilding the ISO, you just update the menu so it boots into the preseed

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will_you_suck_my_ass@reddit

You could literally just create an disk image and create a new user on each machine. But tbh a cloud workstation might be capable here depending on their needs

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mrjamjams66@reddit

But if you spend the time now, you'll gain valuable experience and future proof yourself for the inevitable 10, 20, etc, more down the road

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LiveCourage334@reddit

If they are using Ubuntu, once he figures out what tools they need, he can just remaster a live image from the first install and use that for all the other workstations. Easy peasy. Plus, assuming they don't still need windows on the machine, The installer will do all of the correct configuration of The bootloader. From there, you just need to turn on silent boot or set the grub time out to an extremely small number. OP - You will definitely want to have a machine running the same operating systems as your engineers so you can be learning it in case there are questions, but desktop Linux really is not hard, especially with Debian variants. You don't even need to mess with SSH if you don't want to; commercial remote support tools generally have wide support for any Debian based OS.

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Whoitecyat@reddit

Great learning opportunity aswell!!

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pdp10@reddit

> teamviewer also supports linux. The good news is that Teamviewer has supported Linux for over a decade. The bad news is that the performance wasn't good when we last used it, and of course, *it's Teamviewer*.

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AnnyuiN@reddit

Yeah, TeamViewer is TEAMVIEWER. Heck at least use bomgar from beyond trust. Sure it's garbage but it's not TEAMVIEWER garbage.

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aldi-trash-panda@reddit

RustDesk

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AnnyuiN@reddit

Never tried that but I'll take a look!

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aldi-trash-panda@reddit

let me recommend my latest obsession, /r/selfhosted

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AnnyuiN@reddit

Oh I'm aware of that sub! I absolutely love it! It's what's convinced me to run proxmox haha :)

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slugshead@reddit

Certainly ticks the box for some form of remote support

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Clivna@reddit

i use it daily on 120 linux machines from my windows host, works perfectly fine and the only features not working is chat and dragging files directly from host.

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entyfresh@reddit

ScreenConnect works with Linux too

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TheDunadan29@reddit

I've found Rufus great for Windows, but I've had issues with Linux distros. Yumi might be the better option for Linux depending on the hardware. There are other boot drive creation software over at Pendrivelinux.com I highly recommend.

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BynJohn@reddit (OP)

Yeah, they'll be standalone. And we are not installing any AV as per the instructions i got since that might cause issues with testing for them. And it won't come in contact with our company network. Is this a terrible idea?

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gbe_@reddit

This may be a dumb question, but: if all you need is an extremely simple setup (and a current Ubuntu + TeamViewer _is_ extremely simple), and your end-users will be their own sysadmins on these boxes anyway, why not just ship the naked boxes to the end users and tell them to install Ubuntu+TV themselves?

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jantari@reddit

If it really doesn't touch your network (completely isolated) then it's fine tbh.

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PrincipleExciting457@reddit

I don’t think many people read your post OP. Definitely follow what this guy and what u/thuglife42069 said. This isn’t too hard for what your manager asks for. Lotta good, but Linux is pretty straightforward once you use it a few times.

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reckedcat@reddit

Depends on the end use. If these are engineering workstations that they're gonna use to run builds or simulations, no AV may be desirable as it can introduce file locking or memory monitoring that high performance tools can be affected by. If that's the case, getting them setup and familiar with the stations in an isolated environment is a good start and then you have time to figure out how you'd want to permit them on the network later; behind a jump server or isolated VLAN or something so they don't become a risk factor later.

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slugshead@reddit

Professionally it's not the best idea - But it just makes your life easier . It's not on your head.

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dansedemorte@reddit

ubuntu is crazy simple. no registering it to redhat. I'd also recomend not doing doing a minimal install, because then you will have to all those little helper packages which can be a PITA. I think we used Clam AV until we were forced to switch our servers over to windows defender due to organization wide rule...i think mostly because everywhere else is just windows boxes and AD junk. Great for managing a bunch a business laptops, not so fun for actual servers.

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slugshead@reddit

I've got clamAV running on quite a few linux servers in work. I'd much prefer to have something like Sophos in place which would work across all platforms, keeps things consistent...

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dansedemorte@reddit

thats probably the same reason we got moved to windows defender:-).

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watching_ju@reddit

> teamviewer also supports linux. Its even easier - Ubuntu knows how to rdp out of the box.

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JesusJoinsTheBattle@reddit

Create a linux PXE server to spice things up.

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Aggressgrtyr@reddit

I'd start with downloading and installing the newest ubuntu 22.04 LTS on some spare computer / laptop at work just to start getting familiar with it

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slugshead@reddit

Or a VM, cannot recommend this enough. You don't even need to install virtualbox or vmware workstation anymore, you can do it in hyper-v built into windows with a 1 click installer

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

Option 2 is what I'm doing to learn Linux... but instead of installing on hardware I'm using virtual box... snapshot before a change... hose it and revert... success? new snapshot.

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slugshead@reddit

That's the best way to learn! When I was at that stage, had to do it on bare metal! destroyed my daily driver a number of times.

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cabledog1980@reddit

This! Easy and you will learn a bit. Don't go into it worried, it's just an OS install. Your Linux folks will do the rest to customize the os to their needs. It's truly as simple as loading a windows os with a USB. Just do the default settings and you will be fine. The Linux admins I am sure will take the ball after you have the base installed. I've installed Linux many times, and it was easy, even when I was a Linux rookie.

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Appropriate-Border-8@reddit

MX Linux and Manjaro are two Linux distributions that make it easy to install and which can install drivers automatically and have automatic update options. In addition to Ubuntu. You can easily find their homepages and download mirrors on https://distrowatch.org. Trend Micro's Cloud One: Workload Security product offers anti-virus agents for many different Linux OS types.

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Appropriate-Border-8@reddit

Install TeamViewer (Classic) on Linux Remote desktop access will allow you to shadow the users of these new Linux workstations so that you can help them with their eventual problems and inquiries that they can demonstrate to you in real-time. Buy a business license from Teamviewer and then create an account on the Teamviewer website. This will allow you to register these machines to your account so that you can access them, over the internet, from any computer that is running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. You will even be able to install Teamviewer for Support on your Android or iOS phone and take control of a workstation or just view the desktop in order to observe what is happening while speaking to the user about their issue or inquiry. You can also easily transfer files with it. It is a good alternative to using UNC paths between two domain-connected Windows machines. IMPORTANT: cyber security should NEVER leave your mind as you are setting up and supporting these machines. Unique, complex passwords and strong encryption should be routine in everything that you do. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure..." https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/6318-install-teamviewer-classic-on-linux https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/45-install-teamviewer-classic-on-ubuntu https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/109107-add-computers-and-contacts-to-your-account https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/4352-install-teamviewer-classic-on-linux-without-graphical-user-interface https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/30653-system-tray-statusnotifier-and-teamviewer-classic-for-linux

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Appropriate-Border-8@reddit

How to set up Passwordless SSH Login in Linux Being able to securely access a remote command-line console on all of the workstations will be essential for behind the scenes management and troubleshooting. https://www.fosslinux.com/41717/how-to-set-up-passwordless-ssh-login-in-linux.htm

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Appropriate-Border-8@reddit

The Ubuntu Security Guide Ubuntu Security Guide (USG) is a new tool available with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS that greatly improves the usability of hardening and auditing, and allows for environment-specific customizations. The following sections provide more information on hardening and auditing with usg. https://ubuntu.com/security/certifications/docs/usg

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Appropriate-Border-8@reddit

Ubuntu Automatic Security Updates https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates

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xixi2@reddit

Ok so one weekend, after never having done Linux stuff, I said "Alright I've never done this but I'm gonna install Linux Mint to this laptop today. This may be a project all day I dunno" Like 30 minutes later it was done. A few more google searches on how to install what I wanted, and that was done too. You got this :)

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tastycatpuke@reddit

This is great advice for practice but this is going into a live environment likely with virtual development environments, kernel panics, hardening/user permission control, security/secret keys, file system/lvm/sharing/transferring, and possibly custom repositories or ppa to support proprietary/deprecated frameworks. Stability and backup is key here. Without understanding the workflow this is plain ignorance. What is swap memory and how can this cause issues? How about memory pressure? How can OP triage this? OP can Google it but let’s be honest the power users likely already Googled, tried, and possibly made things worse. If the option to recover is a full reinstall then this is catastrophic.

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RemmingtonBlack@reddit

>Like 30 minutes later it was done i dont know if people realize that.... ESPECIALLY with ubuntu

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Fox_and_Otter@reddit

Depending on your connection, you can download an ubuntu iso, flash it to a USB stick and have another computer up and running on Ubuntu in under 15 minutes. Ubuntu is crazy easy these days.

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RikiWardOG@reddit

I'm just kinda surprised that's the distro the devs want to run

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Fox_and_Otter@reddit

Nothing wrong with Ubuntu, takes 5 min to clean up the annoying stuff. It has the best GUI tools, which developers tend to prefer over terminal.

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YallaHammer@reddit

Is WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) an option with their requirements? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

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chalbersma@reddit

WSL breaks a lot of enterprise things in weird ways.

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YallaHammer@reddit

Good to know that, never used it myself. Unfortunate.

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chalbersma@reddit

WSL is generally excellent. But if you find yourself looking at internals, things like kernel auditing, cgroups, selinux things of that nature; it can get weird in weird ways.

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Tai9ch@reddit

WSL isn't really useful for GUI apps. It can't even run Emacs with decent performance.

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i_do_it_all@reddit

Treat it as a learning experience. Start now. Linux is likely one of the best sys admin knowledge you can have. Don't be afraid to look stupid. That's how we all learn.

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tcpWalker@reddit

Also, ask questions. The linux channel on the sysadmin discord for example.

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vlad_draculya@reddit

What/where can I find the sysadmin discord channel info?

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TheThunderPickle@reddit

Can confirm! I have always been a windows only until this last job that I've been at for 6 years. They have a mix of windows and Linux servers. Took some time, and I'm still learning, but I'm actually favoring Linux over Windows for most services. I'm still trying to learn Ansible. We use it to patch all of our servers, I would just like to be able to build my own playbooks and get a better understanding.

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abbyzou@reddit

My company just got a client with about 20 linux VMs in their engineering dept. I have okayish knowledge and a little experience with linux, but because I opened my big mouth and said I have SOME experience, I'm now our linux person. I feel for OP, but yeah I just gained way more job security lol

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i_do_it_all@reddit

Big time. I do exactly what you did. I corner myself and build my castle there. You gotta challenge yourself somehow. Right. Lol

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abbyzou@reddit

The challenge of fulfilling my new role is something I love so much about working in IT. At least that's what I tell myself haha

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Neb-Scrier@reddit

TBF - there are a lot of people that look stupid but never learn anything.

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-Lord-of-the-Pings-@reddit

This is how IT guys learn new stuff, by giving it a try and seeing how it works, don’t let it be overwhelming, just give it a try and follow the abundance of online documentation, what’s the worst that can happen?

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phillymjs@reddit

This. When I was first starting out in my career, I learned a lot of stuff by repeatedly setting it up on spare hardware at home, messing around with it, and blowing it up, until I knew it forwards and backwards, or at least created enough written notes to guide me in the future.

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-Lord-of-the-Pings-@reddit

It’s our bread and butter, we’re logical people designed with ‘finding out how stuff works’ in our makeup, we don’t know everything about technology, but we should know what’s possible and what’s not possible, guiding us to finding a solution

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tuxinunderpants@reddit

I supported a software engineering team running Ubuntu workstations physically and virtually via VMware Horizon (RIP 2023). It’s easier if you’ve got Linux experience in General but hit me up if you still help.

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UpbeatRing4146@reddit

or tell your boss "I don't have the skills to do this and will require training". It's unreasonable to be expected to work with a stack of technology that is unfamiliar to you.

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vagueAF_@reddit

Management should know you don't have the skills yourself or within the team

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barbarosa2009@reddit

This sounds like a cyber attack waiting to happen.

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changework@reddit

Download Rufus. Install from USB Rufus stick Google “hardening Ubuntu” and follow steps Create a user on each machine for yourself and an ssh public key to login remotely Document your process Turn on automatic security updates Use this as an excuse to deploy Wuzah across your entire environment Become a wuzah expert by taking their $1800 4 day course and have the company pay for it. Update resume with SEIM experience Contact a recruiter for profit

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changework@reddit

Ubuntu is EASIER than windows all day long. You might consider suggesting PopOS rather than Ubuntu. It’s Ubuntu based and easier overall for windows users to adapt to.

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KY_NOC_GUY@reddit

It’s not complicated. Get really familiar with the CLI. Listen to everyone who says to get your own box setup with Ubuntu. Look up best practices, such as using apt update and apt upgrade before you install software. Make sure you understand how installing software works. Different than in windows. If you have a specific use purpose, and need specific software, use the distribution they have documentation. Get familiar with writing bash/shell scripts. It’s only hard if you let yourself get frustrated. If you can’t figure something out. Walk away and try again the next day with a clear head. Chat GPT is great for debugging.

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artlessknave@reddit

Ubuntu is as easier to install than windows is No license. Download, create media, boot media, install. Grub is just a boot loader. Ubuntu will install it by default. Microsoft tries to hide these details so that people are confused exactly like this.bthe windows boot loader is just one many, though it's inferior and will not play nice with others

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thereisnouser@reddit

I'm curious what they're doing that specifically needs Linux. Maybe you could get away with deploying Windows System for Linux.

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M-Valdemar@reddit

Shocked only one person has mentioned auto-install.. 1. Generate a custom autoinstall config - https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/install/autoinstall-quickstart still using ISO (on USB flash) 2. Configure virtual machines from ISO (on USB flash) using cloud-innit Net result is you have a USB flash drive that automatically installs, configures, and deploys bare metal machines whilst the foundations of something extensible that can be shifted to centralised repos (HTTPs Blob/S3 storage basically) if required and aligns with best practice. Ubuntu Desktop is just an APT metapackage - there is no reason to use the Ubuntu Desktop specific ISO. In terms of effort, I did this for three laptops a few months ago to ensure consistent tooling for IR response activities - it took me two hours and I haven't been on the tools for a few years - it's not hard just follow the documentation.

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anna_lynn_fection@reddit

Welcome to /r/linuxadmin ? lol One step at a time. Get it and start playing with it. A dozen isn't quite enough that I'd suggest someone who doesn't know Linux to try and get one machine right and the distribute that image to 12 machines, mostly because you're probably going to think of something along the way and need to change things afterward, in which case you'll want to use Ansible. Since you'll want to use ansible to manage the machines while you have them, you may as well just start there and forget spending time trying to make an "installer" that sets everything up right. I'd suggest using Xorg, instead of Wayland. I don't know if Wayland is default on ubuntu yet or not, but remote desktop apps are a pain in the ass with wayland. I woudl remove wayland so that it doesn't get used accidentally, and just have Xorg on there. Install 2 remote desktop solutions. If you can, I'd set up a MeshCentral server for them to connect to, and you can remote desktop, terminal, manage files, etc. I think my 2nd choice would be rustdesk. If you've got some kind of RMM that supports Linux already, then by all means, use that. There's not much point in learning to troubleshoot until you have trouble to shoot, because whatever you learn probably won't be what happens - just like Windows. Installation should be simple. It's really not that different from installing Windows. Partition, password, time zone, keyboard, etc.... and let it go. I'll just stop, before I write a bible. Just get started and look up what you need as you need it and you'll do fine.

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Tai9ch@reddit

> I don't know if Wayland is default on ubuntu yet or not, but remote desktop apps are a pain in the ass with wayland. None of the issues with Wayland are worth deviating from the standard install for someone with no previous Linux experience.

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anna_lynn_fection@reddit

What? You don't think being able to remote support systems that will be out of state is relevant?

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Tai9ch@reddit

Why would you need remote desktop to remote access a Linux workstation?

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anna_lynn_fection@reddit

Because it's a workstation, it has a DE, and the end user is going to be working in the DE, and if the user has a problem with some software, you're going to want to be able to access that software to help them.

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Tai9ch@reddit

That sounds good, but for largely user-managed workstations I think that's a much less likely edge case than you're thinking. And for the cases that do look like that, screen sharing will be a much more useful tool. In any case, my key point is this: Somebody with minimal Linux experience planning a small deployment shouldn't be getting or taking advice to make major changes to the default config before even getting test machines up.

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anna_lynn_fection@reddit

And that too will be a shit show on Wayland. Every time I try to share or record desktop stuff with Wayland/Pipewire, it's a shit show of crashes. https://www.google.com/search?q=wayland+screen+sharing+crash

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Tai9ch@reddit

Huh? If you have any remote access then you can setup whatever additional remote access you want later, including Xorg-based remote desktop. There's no reason to start by messing up the default local desktop config just because you might have to consider some potential workaround later.

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VirtualViking3000@reddit

It's reasonable to ask for training if you are being asked to do something you don't know how to do. Unless it doesn't matter in which case do CompTIA Linux+ by yourself and get practising. Ansible is worth looking at for deployment but you need to know Linux first.

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TheDunadan29@reddit

GRUB is just the bootloader. When you start up a machine and it goes through POST, Grub comes up and gives you options for which OS you want to load. Typically this is installed by default with Ubuntu. Configuration is more complicated, but that's it in a nutshell. It also allows you to select which kernel you want to load, so if you have multiple Linux kernels you can load the one you need. Otherwise Linux installing is pretty similar to if you've ever created a boot drive for Windows and installed. You load the boot drive, it'll give you some options to run a live desktop instance or to install (your first intro to GRUB!) If it's easier you can boot to the desktop and install from the GUI. It'll have you set your user (local admin), location, and you'll partition the drive. If this is a Linux only workstation so much the better! If it's a dual boot I highly recommend first partitioning from Windows Disk Management. I've borked my Windows install when partitioning from the Ubuntu Disks utility before. Drivers in Linux are pretty easy, usually the drivers load automatically, just like on Windows. You may have to configure the GPU drivers, but it's not hard, there's even a way to do everything from the settings in the GUI. And AMD drivers are open source which should mean they work pretty well on Linux, but it may still require some fine tuning. You're not messing with AD or LDAP, so I'm assuming you'll just setup local users and make them admins. That's fine and easy on your part. One less thing to setup. But yeah, I would start by grabbing an old PC and try installing Linux on it. After doing a dry run a lot of this will become more clear, and a lot less intimidating when you do it for real. Might be good to keep your test machine around to learn on too so you can figure out how to navigate. And learning the terminal is not really too different from CMD or Powershell. Yes, the commands are different, but it's not that bad once you try it. The nice thing about Linux being open source is there's a lot of free resources out there to learn. I've learned everything from watching free Linux videos on YouTube and joining Linux forums. Also might as well plug r/Linux r/Ubuntu and r/linux4noobs

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scottsp64@reddit

There's aa lot of good advice here. Especially that you should have access to your own LInux machine if you are going to support it. I would push hard for that. But even before you can get your hands on a real Linux Workstation, I would suggest two other things: 1. Install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL version 2) on your work machine ASAP. You might as well start becoming familiar with the Linux terminal and bash. 2. Enable Hyper-V on your Windows machine and install an Ubuntu VM there. These are two easy ways for you to start to immerse your self in Ubuntu and become more familiar with it before you even get your hands on a real Ubuntu Workstation.

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peterox@reddit

This is one for the Linux channels I watch. It's called Learn Linux TV. Install Ubuntu on a box you can main for while and you'll pick it up bit by bit. Good Luck! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxQKHvKbmSzGMvUrVtJYnUA

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audioeptesicus@reddit

"Sure boss. Which technical training program you want me to sign up for before I deploy so that I am equipped to manage such an environment?"

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blue_pineapple123@reddit

My first thought also.

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gmlynx78@reddit

"And since it's not in my role or contract what will my compensation look like if this is going to be required as a long term thing?"

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OpeningParamedic8592@reddit

If you have administered windows for a long time and have good trb experience, you can get over the learning curve of Linux pretty quickly. We started using rancher recently and with that a lot of Linux machines. In the end, I think they are easier than windows in a lot of the of ways. Def make one. For yourself, whether it be a vm or whatever. The command memory is prob the strangest thing to a windows admin.

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tastycatpuke@reddit

I would figure out what kind of hardware the Ubuntu is installed on, better to have supported hardware with driver and firmware updates. If they’re using the TPM chip to encrypt their processes or GPU drivers for a specific application. I would familiarize yourself with Ubuntu but ultimately you shouldn’t be providing continued support. Consider Ubuntu Pro license and have their tech support handle desktop issues under short notice. If it was non-critical deployment I’d say wing it but if uptime is critical I’d politely decline past getting the OS installed.

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Slight_Manufacturer6@reddit

That is all automated in most Linux installers. Just like setting up Windows. Just put in an Ubuntu USB drive and follow the installer and done. It’s much easier than you are thinking.

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Any_Poetry3078@reddit

Honestly, tell them you don’t have the required knowledge to do it. Without some Linux knowledge, hey you’ll probably figure something out that works. However, it will probably be massively, insecure, impossible to properly, manage, and a liability. It also has a big chance of making you look stupid when the engineers who actually understand Linux see your work. But, if you think you can figure it out two weeks, what you need is ansible. Look that up and learn it well.

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DonCBurr@reddit

agree...

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DonCBurr@reddit

have you told your manager that none of the staff including yourself has experience with Linux. In IT there is nothing wrong with saying you don't know something and dabbling could cause problems. I know this does not solve the problem, but leatning Linux and supporting it in two weeks is going to be very difficult and a very unfair ask.

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Aethlewulf_160@reddit

In a corporate environment, the engineers are likely going to run into supportabikity constraints if they're ONLY running Linux. Have you looked into alternatives like WSL or VMs or issuing a 2nd laptop?

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BlackHoleSurfer2020@reddit

Share the job details and give this Linux guy a chance to have a job. I am looking for work

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mcbain76@reddit

My advice, install netboot.xyz. Deploy all the machines using that. If you have any scripting experience, you can find many tutorials on creating a bash setup script to configure all the machines to your needed software configurations.

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popanonymous@reddit

The Remote Support thing is the only thing I don’t know about. My guess is one, if not all of the users will be able to help you. Ubuntu is crazy simple and cool. You’ll be, “Why didn’t I try this before.”

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ollivierre@reddit

Proxmox with 13 VMs and be done with it

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DogDeadByRaven@reddit

If you're meant to manage the devices, while not required I went the route of having my employer pay the $25/yr for Ubuntu Pro licensing. I use Landscape which allows you to assign who has the equivalent of local admin rights that you can take away at any time, software to deploy via scripts, handles patching and security compliance settings, and on 23.04 you can setup SSO integration so they use AD creds to login to their systems (this may be available in 22.04 now). They get termed = no login. Not being able to control login to systems is dicey when it comes to audits if your employer gets audited for say SOX compliance. You setup a test system for your base image that has the main applications all workstations will need. Ubuntu desktop is fairly user friendly and most apps can be found in the repositories. Sometimes if you go to the vendors page they'll give you the script to install it which is no more difficult than installing via Powershell is. Put your image on USB for deployment to the rest. Then deploy out the added apps that are device specific. Such as your remote tool (we use connectwise/screen connect), Endpoint Protection etc. We integrate our systems with Intune as well to lock down access to pretty much all their web tools through compliance policies. That might be overkill for you but I had a similar need when we got nicked on our last audit when we only had proper controls on Windows and Mac workstations. Granted I had 60 days for remediation.

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VjoaJR@reddit

Windows Subsystem for Linux. The windows machines can be managed by AD/AAD. The Linux machines live as VM, shell can be accessed by the windows environment and can be managed by Intune or another MDM. It also supports GUI apps.

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FredGarply@reddit

Repost here in 2 years when you’re ready to scrap all those windows boxes

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walkasme@reddit

Why Ubuntu? So many better distro's.  /sarcasm

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gotmynamefromcaptcha@reddit

It's fairly straightforward. I wouldn't bother with imaging for 12 PCs, just do them all off a USB. You can give it a trial run on a VM on your own if you want to see how the install goes. Sounds like they don't want them on the domain so that's even easier.

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brokensyntax@reddit

What remote access tool do you use for windows road warriors? Good chance they have a Linux version of the tool. For 12 I wouldn't bother rolling a custom image package. I probably wouldn't even bother with a PXE install. Just install the base OS on them all, making the first one for you. Make a VM as well. On the VM take a snapshot, then go to town with configuration. Ask chatGPT for the bash commands to install your software packages, and how to test your specific device drivers. Test those commands to make a simple bash script, no different than working I'm batch or powrshell, just a list of commands to run in order. We're not getting fancy in a reddit post. Test the script on your VM, roll back to snapshot. Test again. Comfortable you have this part sorted out? Use the script to configure all of the laptops. You're done. There are more elegant solutions, but this is the simplest.

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HourCryptographer82@reddit

ive done it with ubuntu and use the cloud init preseed customization is a good way to automate the intial setup then for the configuration you can use ansible to do it

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Substantial-Fix-8736@reddit

You mention in a follow up comment that the computers will not be on the company network. Will they be on a private network? If they are networked that could be useful because there are options to install them all at once. But if not installing 12 from a USB disk isn't unreasonable; especially if you've never done it before because you'll become very familiar with the process when you're done. Installing Ubuntu from a USB stick is very straightforward and I'm positive if you're an experienced windows sysadmin you can follow instructions well enough to do it right now without reading any advice from us. Just go to the Ubuntu website and follow instructions to create the USB, plug it in and go.

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shitty_mcfucklestick@reddit

Ubuntu desktop or server edition? Desktop comes with the windows like interface and GUI, server edition is command-line only. Either one is about the same to install, just follow instructions. If server edition, the standard for remote access is SSH. Check out how to generate OpenSSH keys on Ubuntu for that, and how to SSH into your machine. You’ll need to figure out with the team if the systems all need individual keys or a shared one. Also, chdck out Digital Ocean’s blog / guides - they have very well written guides on a lot of basic Ubuntu stuff sorted by version.

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dRaidon@reddit

Base install, then manage with ansible.

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AlternativeShoe1610@reddit

I wonder why this advice with ansible has so few upvotes

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anna_lynn_fection@reddit

That'll work while he's got them all sitting on his LAN, but when they go out of state, that could be not fun.

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AnnyuiN@reddit

Tailscale might be a decent paid option?

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dRaidon@reddit

That's when you use a vpn. Something like tailscale or other mesh vpn would work well. Just have the ansible playbook run every five minutes or so to catch everyone.

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way__north@reddit

for anyone wanting to get started with ansible, check out the LearnLinuxTV youtube channel

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cerealonmytie@reddit

I would recommend Jeff Geerling as weI would recommend Jeff Geerling as well!

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mc_zodiac_pimp@reddit

Came here to say the same thing

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kaiser_detroit@reddit

Came here to say this. Ansible can be a little bit of a pita getting started (with no background) but would make things a breeze after some tinkering.

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miniature_blue_devil@reddit

As said by others build one for yourself, but also two install everything by command line once you have the is up and running. Then you can just make a text file with that and run it on the rest

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alistarb@reddit

Pxe them. Those saying 12 is too small a number forget this won't be the last time op has to do this. The engineers either zero experience and root will break their builds. At that point if accessible it's easier to backup their home and blast it. There will also be new starts etc. Pxe builds are not much harder than a manual install...

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miklos_akos@reddit

Simplest option is to install either Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE or many of the available distros that are relatively simple to manage. You don't have to change grub's config, the kernel config etc. unless you're doing something specific that requires that. I do recommend reading the manpages available online and installing Ubuntu on a machine you're forced to use daily to get the hang of things. Unlike Windows you don't need to install drivers for most hardware, for everything else that has no driver you can google "xyz ubuntu 22" and you'll find (usually) detailed instructions on how to get things going.

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eoinedanto@reddit

You need to figure out both support and security as well as interoperability for your staff collaborating on different OS. Sounds like your firm need to buy in a little expertise, maybe put a project description on here to get advice about the scope and rough effort before then putting that project up on a contracting website?

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leaflock7@reddit

well the first thing is that your manager is clueless about his job. but lets move on. I am going to assume that your company is relatively small , so your windows machines are managed maybe with GPOs or none at all, and they are just the defaults when the domain was created? If not and the windows machines are on azure with Intune, then it is a good chance to use Intune to manage these linux machines as well (at least as much as it can). The only thing you can do at this point, is just download the Ubuntu iso and install it on those machines . Create an account for you and a secondary for the devs. Install rust desk or no-machine or something similar to be able to remote desktop to them. If your antivirus has a linux version go for it. Since the devs will be admins , that means that they will be able to play and mess up anything on those machines, so put a USB with ubuntu on the shipping box. I know most people will say that since they are linux devs they will know their stuff around linux, but life showed be this is not always the case. Many devs know the app/service they develop and what this interacts with, and nothing that is related to troubleshooting the linux pc/desktop. Get your manager to get you on a linux training course if this is something that will stay with the company. Having no idea about linux and supporting them is not easy and wont be done in 1 week or 1 month. It wont hurt if you also reach out to an external contractor that in case you cannot figure out things they can jump in or even pay for the ubuntu support.

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ImUrFrand@reddit

ubuntu is simple to install and update. dont stress out. it's not some arcane druid magic.

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thehunter699@reddit

Eh just download the ISO for Ubuntu and follow the install GUI. You'll be fine

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Ambitious-Yak1326@reddit

I would say to clarify your role in this and division of responsibility a bit more. Is this a one off thing to just give them a machine with an OS and then not so much? If so, they can probably install the OS by themselves and you are just responsible for procurement. Or are you supposed to be in a devops role where you need to support them in various ongoing tasks? If that’s the case you’re looking at a different set of tools, like ansible.

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Interesting-Buddy957@reddit

>setup GRUB (I'm not sure what that is still), It's the booatloader

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volrod64@reddit

Maybe i'm dumb but ... Just do one perfectly, then clone it ! Copy paste 12 times and congrats, you setup 13 Ubuntu in one day !

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Le_Vagabond@reddit

> We're planning to give the users full access let them install their OS then, if they're linux users they're probably fine with it. give them the RMM tool you want to use, that's all they'll need.

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MarquisDePique@reddit

This is where things fall down. Your job is going to be to administer the workstation and keep it secure and functional on behalf of the company. Usually that means not giving the users local admin rights. In this case if they're asking for linux then likely they know more than you. Your job won't be to know more than them, focus on either doing the above or (better yet) get in writing acknowledgement from the business that these workstations fall outside the usual av / monitoring / patching / support environment and that rectifying that will take some work.

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flck@reddit

I'm with this guy. No RMM, no AV, no standard build - any engineer who actually wants a Linux box would totally be able to handle it themselves. Otherwise if it's more about appearance and ensuring everyone is at least on the same version... you'll be able to download a standard Ubuntu ISO and install it with a GUI as easily as you'd install Windows. Then do nothing else and let them handle the rest.

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lief79@reddit

I had a job where the company offered Linux support in addition to Windows. It was do what you need to do, and we'll reinstall a blank system if needed. Accurate assumption was the engineers running Linux one more than they did. There was also a laptop borrowed from the help desk that got wiped for solarisx86. Permission not requested. They knew about it and it was required for doing remote automated solaris updates. Better/worse story night be how happy one of my teammates was to remote into his home system and download an Solaris x86 crack. Got access back to an old solaris system in the test lab. My coworkers were the ones automating the updates and installations of production solaris and Linux systems, so over qualified for the support desks.

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Tetha@reddit

I pretty much do the same deal if I get a linux workstation: Give me the laptop, the regulations, and the documentation your helpdesk would get. I'll be able to make things happen then. If I can't within time frame X, then we talk again. Funny enough, we as a linux-only team tend to be an early point of contact at this point if... strange issues appear. Oftentimes, you can pull the linux variants of VPN clients and such into far more verbose and transparent configurations, which makes debugging issues easier. Heh.

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Le_Vagabond@reddit

almost as if it's the only OS that doesn't hide anything and doesn't lie to you, right?

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ImpostureTechAdmin@reddit

I'd love to daily drive a Linux machine I setup. I'm sure if I asked for it I'd get the go ahead, but I'm not a big fan of the whole "rule for thee but not for me" thing a lot of companies have; I'd rather do it at a place that knows enough to do it right and still chooses to With that in kind; would you feel comfortable sharing your company? Or do you know of any others that do the same?

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Le_Vagabond@reddit

the one I'm talking about was https://documentation.xivo.solutions/en/2023.10/ but I left last year. now I'm working for an international SaaS company with around 500 employees and they're looking to force people who aren't on windows back on something they can lock down for compliance... I just hope they'll leave WSL enabled tbh.

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ImpostureTechAdmin@reddit

Thank you! Yeah that's one thing I've given myself is wsl. It makes text manipulation and, by extension, log searching a breeze

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Le_Vagabond@reddit

it's a LOT more powerful than that, I'm quite amazed when I use it on my gaming desktop (for python and stable diffusion mostly). the first time I did a `wsl --mount --vhd 'E:\WSL\ext4.vhdx'` was surprising for instance :D

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rayui@reddit

My advice also!

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Dry_Environment_9254@reddit

Why are you not adding them to AD, unique users per computer? You would or could manage them with SALT but that’s time, this sounds like an absolute security nightmare.

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Bright_Arm8782@reddit

You're assuming the presence of AD, they may be fully cloud.

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stealthgerbil@reddit

Op doesn't know anything about Linux that's why

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Dry_Environment_9254@reddit

OP, I would strongly consider adding them to AD, and diving into SALT, you’ll need to know some programming but that’s the only cheap way you’ll manage them. Luckily most security products support Linux, including Microsoft Defender, you’ll just need to do a custom JSON to apply defender rules.

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throwawayskinlessbro@reddit

Only 12 and on that timetable? Hell, get hands on- do it manually and learn yerself a few things. This is a task that once you’re done, you’ll laugh and think about how much you worried about it. Super easy, you’ll figure it out very quickly.

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Bright_Arm8782@reddit

Doing it sounds easy enough, get the iso, make the usb, boot from it follow prompts. Doing it right might take a bit more, that nagging doubt that I've missed something important. Maybe I worry too much.

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TouchComfortable8106@reddit

My top tip - OS drive encryption doesn't work like bitlocker, you need to turn on the encryption (LUKS) DURING install. The password will need to be entered before each boot (there are ways to avoid this, but none that you'll want to get stuck into right now as!). Check if this is required and workable before you set them all up or you'll have a bad time later! You can encrypt data disks later, but not the OS disk (unless somebody has a clever way around this).

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NDLunchbox@reddit

There's a package called Clevis that lets you bind your LUKS disks to a TPM so it behaves pretty much the same as Bitlocker on boot. Recommend checking it out. Not too bad to configure once you wrap your head around it. My laptop runs Pop!\_OS but should work with Ubuntu.

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TouchComfortable8106@reddit

We use it with Tang servers, haven't tried the TPM option, will check it out!

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justgimmiethelight@reddit

Sounds like a great learning opportunity. For me working on things I haven't done before is the most fun part of the job. Use this to your advantage!

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LightedAppenzeller@reddit

It’s great he’s asked you for a plan! Don’t just focus on the HOW, without understanding the WHY. Why do you need these machines in the first place? Will they be used on a critical project? What do the requirements (let alone the expectations) for support after deployment look like? Make sure to include an ask for: - Training budget for Linux - Capacity from at least one other of your colleagues to take this on as a peer-learning experience. You’ll royally screw yourself by taking this on as a solo in a team without any wider Linux knowlegde. Explain that very clearly. I’m reading a lot of ‘dive in, you’ll be fine’ and of course, it’s a massive opportunity for learning and upskilling. But I’m seeing major red flags around the ask itself that could easily get you burned if you aren’t clear from the start about what you need to successfully deliver and support a new tech stack within your team.

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xCHRISSOx@reddit

I've been a linux enthusiast and IT professional for 2 decades, and an engineer for 1 decade. I I have designed and built several linux workstations and servers for professional and personal use. After all that experience, I find the most peace of mind by going with pre-built linux systems. Now that you can purchase workstations from big companies such as Dell with Ubuntu 22.04 pre-installed and supported, it's a no-brainer even for me to go that route. If there's a problem, it's on Dell, not you. I currently manage several Dell Precision 3660 machines with Ubuntu 22.04 in one of our engineering test labs, and they have been trouble free.

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Upstairs-Ad9102@reddit

Dell offers Precision 3660 workstations with Ubuntu 22.04 pre-installed. They come ready to accept power hungry GPUs, can be setup with AD, and have 3yrs of Dell support. I manage several of these in our engineering test lab. Pretty hard to go wrong with that route.

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shitmuffins@reddit

J

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dinosaurwithakatana@reddit

The scary part is that these will be unmanaged. These engineers will have root access and can install whatever they want. Getting Ubuntu installed on these boxes will be pretty easy, honestly just as easy as installing Windows 10. The hard part will be managing these things, and making them secure, as the management solution will most likely not be turnkey compatible with whatever is being done for management on all the existing Windows hosts. My advice for the task of installing though is definitely have your own machine that you can install (and safely break/test with) ubuntu on. There is tons of documentation online, but if nobody here has suggested it, use chatgpt! If you need to do something on the command line, ask chatgpt what command you would use, test it out on your test host to ensure it works and then run on the host you are deploying. Especially if you don't have any teammates to lean on for support in learning Linux, chatgpt can really be your friend here in terms of learning new concepts about the os, just make sure to test out what you are running before blindly running commands, installing packages, etc.

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fivelargespaces@reddit

Just do it! Use AMD or Intel. Avoid NVIDIA if you can (GPU). I've had nothing but problems with Nvidia in the past, in Dell workstations. Problems went away once I switched to AMD Workstation cards. Ubuntu is very good at supporting Nvidia, but AMD and Intel have open source drivers baked into the kernel.

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Kooky_Mission_1503@reddit

This is easy task. Build one in vm and clone this vm how many you want. I can finish this in one day.

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Mohit951@reddit

You need this https://youtu.be/wBp0Rb-ZJak?si=m2iL0nG8nK0NH1nA It has explanations from ISO types, release cycles etc. to sysadmin commands, LAMP stack install, network troubleshooting, remote access etc. Quite old though but will help you clear concepts about the Linux ecosystem.

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Judsonian1970@reddit

But the time you hit number 6 you’ll know your way around Linux and by number 12 you’ll be the site master.

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Few-Reception-4939@reddit

You can do a practice install with Vmware if you don’t have a sacrificial workstation. Ubuntu is pretty easy to install so it shouldn’t be too hard to get up to speed. Make sure you have a plan to keep them up to date on security patches. I’ve never worked with many Ubuntu systems at one time, they were mostly patched manually

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rayui@reddit

Software engineer here. Let the devs do it.

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CallMeAnanda@reddit

1. Let the devs do it 2. They install arch 3. They don't get any work done because they're too busy playing sysadmin

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Tai9ch@reddit

> They don't get any work done because they're too busy playing sysadmin That's their problem. You don't win anything by trying to overrule their mistakes.

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soawesomejohn@reddit

Yep. Basically, they just need hardware. If you lock BIOS, setup a unique shareable BIOS password for these set of machines so they can change boot order and install the Linux they need.

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Network-_-king@reddit

Maybe partner up with one of them, so op can learn as well.

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-AJ334-@reddit

Are the hardware devices in question like USB/something external OR internal? Would be handy to know what's being done to give you proper advice but there are two easy options in your case. **First one:** \- Install Windows on the laptop \- Install Hyper-V role \- Install Ubuntu (grab ISO and literally next-next-next) The reason for doing it this way is that you are giving them full access to the VM and if you need to support it, well your Windows infrastructure will also just work, even AD if you wish to since the host is your standard stack. The other thing is to educate the user how to take snapshots so if they mess it up, they can roll it back on their own. **Second one, treat these as throw away machines:** \- Just install Ubuntu (grab the ISO, Ventoy on USB and drop the ISO and go) \- Install whatever remote support tool you use, TV, BT, etc. \- Make sure to leave yourself one separate priveleged account Pick one and roll with it. Also for yourself, either keep a VM or an actual physical machine. After using too many platforms, it's all the same thing just got to know to use the man page OR Google-Fu to get some answers either way.

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dirtcreature@reddit

irst question is: What policies, if any, need to be enforced? The benefit of Windows is that you can enforce many policies, including firewall. Docker takes care of any linux requirements and is better to manage software projects. If you have HIPPA, ISO, SOC, etc, going Ubuntu should not be taken lightly. There is no default configured firewall configuration for Ubuntu + Desktop. All my windows workstations have pretty strict firewall rules enforced. How about antivirus? Sorry, but linux has malware. M365? Only browser based. Not a bad alternative, but just saying. If compliance is a thing, Windows is king. I just made that up, but at least Windows has some plausible deniability built in. You got hacked? Yes, we have windows Understood Instead of: You got hacked? Yes, we run a dozen Ubuntu workstations where the devs installed it and are root I see. Who thought this was a good idea?

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3percentinvisible@reddit

As the engineers will be full admin, be able to do what they want, and they're not going to be on your network just install Linux from the distro iso and send them out for them to do with as they wish

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WithAnAitchDammit@reddit

This is the way

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SkySchemer@reddit

This is the way.

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doglar_666@reddit

If you aren't locking these machines down and users have sudo privileges, apart from encrypting the disk at install and confirming all devices have drivers, I don't see what else needs doing, as it could all be undone. Record the encryption recovery key and be done with it.

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RikiWardOG@reddit

You can't really do shit yet with intune with Linux distros tbh. It's really not worth it

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doglar_666@reddit

I agree Intune for Linux is limited but having the devices enrolled might be better than nothing in OP's case.

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Spiritual_Grand_9604@reddit

Install OS and install a VNC remote desktop tool of your choice. Don't worry about grub, it does not need to be set up and as you seem like you'll only be using a single OS on these machines you won't even be interacting with it directly anyway. Regarding setup? Linux user's are quite specific and will customize their setup and layout how they want. Even if you set it up they might install their own shell (zsh for example), and whatever tools they may need rendering your initial setup pointless.

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pdp10@reddit

> a dozen Ubuntu 22.04 machines If you don't have an articulable reason for using an "LTS" distro, use the latest available. If canonical keeps shoving 22.04 at you by default, that's their mistake -- use the latest, which is 23.10. For one thing, the newer version is going to support the latest hardware, because it has a newer kernel. You're overthinking the rest of it a bit. Download a 23.10 ISO, slap it on your Ventoy USB stick, and start installing a test rig. Drivers for basically everything except Nvidia graphics are built-in.

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pomyh@reddit

> If you don't have an articulable reason for using an "LTS" distro yes, the "Long Term Support" part

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pomyh@reddit

Ask the engineers who will be using these workstations if they prefer to setup the machines themselves instead of someone who has no linux experience.

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Glass_wizard@reddit

Given the short time you have.... Consider using Windows with Linux Subsystem, that way you can continue to support Windows while having access to the underlying Linux you need. You would need to confirm WSL meets the needs, but often times, it will. If that doesn't work, for just 12 machines, consider manual installation from a usb drive . You can get them all done in a day. This can buy you more time to learn. Setup several Linux machines so you can learn system administration. I would also recommend taking a course online to get up to speed fast . Places like skillshare and udemy have good courses that can show you the very basics. Lastly, as you prepare to support Linux desktop, be prepared for time suck. During the learning phase, which can last as long as a year, it can take a silly amount of time to troubleshoot simple issues like audio not working or packages breaking when updates are pulled down .

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SorryMatch8461@reddit

"No Machine" is a fantastic remote tool

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way__north@reddit

been running nomachine for 2 years , really like it. (using open vpn to access it for the remote location)

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SorryMatch8461@reddit

I love that it's cross-platform

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Dudefoxlive@reddit

Interesting might have to try this.

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portol@reddit

Dell has Ubuntu laptops that's really good, and they have mgmt software too.

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ListMore5157@reddit

Get familiar with the command line as well. Linux is actually much easier to manage via scripts than the UI.

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xzer@reddit

There are a few philosophical differences that makes understanding Linux from being a long time Windows user that can be a bit hard but it's a nice OS. Runs great through VirtualBox and worth having that on your own machine to test connecting to the company network shares, web resources etc. The primary things you will need to support through this OS will be company resources, the rest I'd expect the devs to have control over. Make sure web pages load correctly, SSO pages authenticate as expected, network shares authenticate, any company software that's required can run or spot issues early on that you can report up. Big things might be HR resources n such.

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way__north@reddit

> Runs great through VirtualBox virtualbox is nice, just be aware that installing the vb extensions may cause some licensing issues with oracle...

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Forsaken_Instance_18@reddit

ChatGPT will help you

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Puzzled-Hedgehog346@reddit

That's doesn't seem hard u could do cloud init and cubic No specific desktop environment ?

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duane11583@reddit

1) ask your smartest linux guy the following: can you help me? i’ll buy you lunch. 2) make sure you install wireshark, this creates a special group named wireshark. 3) when you add users use the command: bash# adduser -G wheel,dialout,wireshark 4) for remote access add the package “xrd” Microsoft windows remote desktop will like it see: [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/xrdp](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/xrdp) 5) install sshd and enable it!

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MrEllis72@reddit

Whatever you do, the engineers will think it's wrong. Good luck! The truth is, if I can push out Linux boxes anyone can. I'm not what you would call bright. Or pretty. But at least... Well, I can make a Linux box.

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CNYMetalHead@reddit

Thankfully for you Ubuntu is the most novice friendly nix distro. But like others said, setup 13 and use one yourself to get familiar. What I did back with RHEL 3 was set it up and use it for everything that doesn't require a Win box. And use the command line to do various things instead of the GUI

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Fantastic_Glass_9792@reddit

This sounds expensive. To me it sounds like an opportunity to save your manager some time and money. If they are engineers (probably dev but idk) ytf are they not getting a machine drop shipped to them either with Ubuntu on it or putting the OS on themselves? I would offer them a hypervisor so they could have many vms to test with, but every good Linux dev engineer I know is definitely capable of this and it would be preferable. Just standardize your remote (and any other required) software and make sure you check they installed and it’s working, then document this. I support dev, but I’m a systems engineer. The dev guys I’ve worked with like their workspace their way -(we have to keep it within corporate boundaries) - especially when they have to have a hardware standalone for whatever reason. If they did not need this I would just say to go to Azure. We are in multiple regions with Azure and all of them have Linux vms available. In fact, the whole thing pretty much runs on top of Linux - even the windows stuff. It’s evident in the new PowerShell and if you know that you’re going to pick up Ubuntu quickly. Make sure you and at least a couple others also start learning Linux basics. Support people need time off or get another job every so often so it’s important to have a pool. Google Fu will get you a long ways.

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aamfk@reddit

just buy them all Chromebook Plus. I paid $278 for an I3 with 128gb NVMe disk and 8gb ram. Just roll your own is a pipe dream.

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Dry_Inspection_4583@reddit

Terraform? Or if they won't pay use opentofu

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WayneH_nz@reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxupskillchallenge/ Starts at the beginning of each month. Look up November's one. Follow along , 15 hours to do a month's challenges. Do this after you have installed the computers. This to learn how to look after them afterwards.

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PhilSocal@reddit

Came here to say this. I've pointed other admins to that sub and it helps a lot!

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Sarduci@reddit

Engineers should know what they’re doing. Toss the distro on a thumb drive, tape it on, ship it out.

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scriminal@reddit

Ubuntu has a paid support license option which includes automatic updates. I'd get that for these, then you can centrally manage / monitor updates. There's other paid support options too. [https://ubuntu.com/pro](https://ubuntu.com/pro)

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slashdave@reddit

You can setup AD for a machine on which a user has full access. Nothing prevents you from keeping control of the certificates and passwords.

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gnimsh@reddit

Don't set up a dozen. Set up 1 and fully configure it. Then image it and apply those images to all the others.

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Alex_2259@reddit

This is goated if your employer is going to give you time and breathing room to learn how to do this, useful skill. If it's a "make it so" request on top of 10000000000 other things, fuck that they need to invest properly

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randomthad69@reddit

Can have it done in 10 minutes.

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diphtong@reddit

Order 12 machines preloaded with Ubuntu from System 76 and call it a day?

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Zeal0usD@reddit

When installing Ubuntu there is an option to install 3rd party drivers, trust me using this instead of trying to install GPU drivers manually

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AresTheCannibal@reddit

the way we do it at my job: throw the Ubuntu ISO on a flash drive and install it with that, make sure to make some partitions when formatting the disk for root/home/efi/swap. the account it prompts you to make will be your maintenance admin account, that'll be the one you manage the machines with (we do it over ssh mainly). once you're in create a user account and give it admin if you must (t's rly bad for security), it's not too hard to create permissions for your users so they can install software using the package manager or the Ubuntu store. I'd make a setup script to install all the packages and do all the configuration you decide on to streamline the process, make sure one of those things is openssh server and the associated configuration to disable root login. that's pretty much it, Linux isn't very hard once you get the hang of it. feel free to dm me if you have questions 🫶

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cashMoney5150@reddit

Where are you located? I can help setup if you want to hire me as a contractor. I've done this before.

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kjasdiw43@reddit

You're a sysadmin and can't fucking google "how to install linux on PC"?

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RikiWardOG@reddit

grub is just a bootloader

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Finding_Capt_Nemo@reddit

Buy an old Thinkpad off eBay and start the journey. It’s much easier now than in the past.

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slamthedeck86@reddit

Had this issue with my new admin, had never worked with Linux. I had him go on udemy and take a crash course in Debian. Debian, and it's more user friendly derivative Ubuntu are by far the most popular. If you're just getting into Linux then install on your own laptop KDE Neon, which is another offshoot of Debian but the most windows comparable I've found. Dm me if you need any specific direction, but this is where I'd start.

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nivekisbackwards@reddit

First and foremost, is it normal to be given tasks you know nothing about? From there I can help, but I don't have enough information to give you solid advice in your career. This could potentially cost you your job, and I want to make sure that you are not going to lose your job over a comment on Reddit...

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will_you_suck_my_ass@reddit

Don't be nervous once you understand Linux you'll love it

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Kahless_2K@reddit

Installing hardware is literally just plug it in most of the time. Your uses almost certainly do not need to be superusers. Use ssh for Remote access. Layer vnc on top of a ssh tunnel if you need to see their screen. It's worth finding out what app they need so you can install with a Kickstarter file. The first thing you need to do is find out what software they need, in case that drives the "what distro" decision.

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gurilagarden@reddit

Good advice here. Look, Ubuntu is easy as fuck. Just do the rufus to usb thing, install it via the recommended install, it's as easy as windows. Grub is the boot loader, it's part of the install. The drivers are mostly in the install, except for video card, and there's plenty of online documentation. Once you've done one, the rest fall like dominos. You don't really need our help. Google will get you where you need to be. Just hang out tonight or tomorrow, stick a hard drive in your personal computer, install ubuntu on it, get a feel for it, and you're off to the races. It's not a big deal.

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gnussbaum@reddit

Putty will become your friend. Also look into sudo configs

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Outrageous_Device557@reddit

Find out what the requirements instruments have and go with vendor recommendations

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screech_owl_kachina@reddit

Would a virtual machine not suffice?

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Intabus@reddit

Some may disagree with me, but I would say download it onto a pair of extra machines you use yourself (main station and a remote access training station), and use ChatGPT to figure out how to do things you may expect to come up. Make a list of things and try them. You get the meat and potatoes quicker with ChatGPT than you do with Google. You aren't looking to learn everything right now, just what you need to get up and running. Once you get some of the basic stuff down like navigating the file structure and installing apps you can dive into more Obviously you will want to read some articles you find so you can learn the intricacies and good security habits, but if you ask ChatGPT how to install a Remote Desktop it will tell you and give you the commands. And then instead of having to search for whatever error you get, you can just drop that into ChatGPT and it will tell you what happened, and give a correction if applicable. I have learned so much about scripting and Linux from it mysef.  Keep in mind though, ChatGPT is only given information up to like 2019 or so, and as such it's data can be outdated and SHOULD be supplemented with a bit of current content reading to make sure you are up to date.

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PenlessScribe@reddit

Since these aren't production, set up [automatic security updates](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates). Unlike Windows, which generally rolls up fixes into mega-patches issued once a month, GNU/Linus distros just make them available as soon as they can, possibly several per day. The patches almost never break things, but on production systems or if you otherwise want to be careful, you can test out the patches and then manually install approved ones with `apt update; apt dist-upgrade <list of packages>`.

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eveninghaze@reddit

Ubuntu Guides are really good https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/

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thebemusedmuse@reddit

I first installed Linux in 1995 when there was no YouTube or Reddit. We read the documentation and made it work. It was hard back then, you had to compile your own kernels and tinker a lot. These days you can just install it like Windows. If you’ve not done this before then seize the day!

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ZPrimed@reddit

Did you have to suffer through doing it on dial-up, too? My first Linux experience was Slackware 3.0...

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danekan@reddit

That's one specific thing I remember.. I remember it taking three or four days to download. Also I blew up my monitor by miscinfiguring X.. I actually thought it might happen because I read it, but I remember editing that file wanting to see what happened and running startx then a quick buzz and and smoke smell. And I had mom drive me to best buy to buy a new CRT (I paid because I had more money at 15 doing computer gigs than my parents)

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thebemusedmuse@reddit

Nah, we had 10Mbit Ethernet in our college rooms. That made things pretty tolerable. At home it was dialup of course. We mostly ran RedHat 3.x and 4.x. Calling it a distribution was a bit of an exaggeration.

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ZPrimed@reddit

I'm a few years behind you, so I was at home on dial-up experimenting, it was terrible.

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coyote_den@reddit

Installing Ubuntu is damn easy. Mount the ISO, copy the files to a USB stick, boot it. Same as windows as long as you’re using UEFI. It walks you through everything. I’d dare say it’s easier than installing windows, more like installing macOS. As far as remote admin, there’s always SSH but Ubuntu also has built-in Remote Desktop (RDP, same as windows, or you can use VNC) you just have to turn it on.

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Juniper0584@reddit

>OS, setup GRUB (I'm not sure what that is still), verify the drivers are installed and setup a remote access tool incase if we ever need to troubleshoot it (all of machines are going out of state so I won't see it for another month). In future, we'll install an AMD gpu. This is a pretty realistic project for learning about Linux for the first time as an IT professional. Ubuntu ISO burn, remember to check the third party drivers options. Use the 'OEM' install option to set up each device, it will allow you to install the RMM before you start reownership to the end user.

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Frewtti@reddit

It's not that hard, and if the users are admins, they can do everything they want and shouldn't bother you. The key things I'd worry about are making sure they have network drives you control for backups. That way when they trash their systems their work is stored somewhere.

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jacenat@reddit

Anydesk (ex Teamviewer guys) works very well cross platform. It's not super cheap but get you there. As for the other things: **VERIFY THE ENGINEERS KNOW LINUX** If they don't ... call the plan into question. They will **need** to solve most admin problems for themselves. Sequester them into a separate VLAN. Our guys butted heads with us with them being careless with their network config on their docker images. > setup GRUB (I'm not sure what that is still) GRUB is a bootloader. If you deploy a standard Ubuntu 22.04 install, you do not need to concern yourself with GRUB. Ask the engineers, if you can, if you should set up LVM for them and **how they want to have it set up!** If they know their shit, they will give you good specs and the Ubuntu installer will give you a good wizard for that. Image your master machine with a root password you know, deploy it to all machines, set up individual accounts and give them sudo rights. A list of things to look at/learn: * Packet management in ubuntu/debian. Start with apt, but advance quickly to flatpack * LVM if your engineers need it * Docker if you don't know that already * systemd, what it is and how to read journalctl output * netplan (if your engineers need complex networking support) * ssh and key authentication ... download putty and read their documation about it, it's great. It all seems daunting, no doubt. It will take time. You will make mistakes. Communicate these facts to your manager and to the engineers. Everything will be fine.

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stromm@reddit

Alternative suggestion, run Linux in a VM in their windows OS PC. Unless they need direct hardware accesss.

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geoprog@reddit

Make it simple. Hire a contractor Linux administrator for one month. The first week is dedicated to specifications. IP addresses, hostnames, one admin and strong password, default user or specific usernames for engineers, ssh, desktop (I recommend XFCE). The second week is installation. The third week is testing. And write down every step.

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TimTimmaeh@reddit

Don’t forget enterprise support, SOPs, SLAs, Remote management (patching, etc.)

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FleraAnkor@reddit

Jokes aside. Tell your manager you can’t do this in the time he has given you since you have no experience with this. Explain that someone needs to be brought in with the proper know how and that you would love to learn from this person but that you can’t vouch for anything you set up now and when things break (customers will always break things in weird ways you didn’t even imagine possible) you wouldn’t be able to solve it.

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kennyj2011@reddit

100% agree with this… think of deploying windows machines well if you knew nothing about it. Is it easy to get a Linux machine running? Sure… will it be acceptable… no way

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Puzzled-Hedgehog346@reddit

check out cubic you could run out custom ubuntu image you could also jion it azure remote desktop app might be more hard to you could use mesh center you could use ubuntu oem switchs to install linux it also cloud init works also you can point at config file or make custome iso with and it will wipe hard disk do full install cloud init can do pretty much anything you want with shell script update package install custome one set user name etc

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discosoc@reddit

Have you been upfront with your manager about not being qualified for this task? I would start the conversation there.

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Belchat@reddit

I'd rather think the manager would take a laugh at this. A Linux install of a popular distribution is not harder than a Windows install it seems

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kennyj2011@reddit

Do you even Linux? There are so many options from distribution to desktop environments to drivers… etc. it’s simple to install Ubuntu, but you want to do it right and not produce unmanageable junk.

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discosoc@reddit

It’s about managing expectations. The OP is even questioning GRUB so there is some very real concern about being thrown in the deep end on this.

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OkDimension@reddit

Not being qualified for what? Anyone who claims to be a sysadmin should be able to install a Ubuntu ISO or any other OS with appropriate documentation. Setting up it up for larger scale enterprise environment with automated install, monitoring, deployment, narrowing down access is a different story - but we are talking about 12 Ubuntu laptops where management is fine giving users full access for some engineering tests. The only thing OP still needs to decide on is what remote access solution he is going to choose (simplest case just SSH and VNC) and how to secure it so he doesn't get pwned right away. But since off domain they can be just handled like BYOD Macbooks from some exec and isolated accordingly. This is a great learning opportunity.

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colni@reddit

Also does it need to Ubuntu? Linux mint might be a better step from windows if the engineers haven't used Linux before.

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Caddy666@reddit

download an ubuntu iso, install it on a vm. you'll see how easy it is, and then you'll wonder why you're even asking this.....

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K3rat@reddit

If these are desktop options here are the install instructions: https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2022/04/install-ubuntu-2204-step-by-step/amp/ Check VGA drivers: https://linuxconfig.org/graphics-driver-check-on-ubuntu-22-04#:~:text=Graphics%20driver%20check%20Ubuntu%2022.04%20Jammy%20Jellyfish%20step,-E%20%27VGA%7CDisplay%27%20OR%20%24%20sudo%20lshw%20-c%20video How to access grub in Ubuntu: https://askubuntu.com/questions/16042/how-to-get-to-the-grub-menu-at-boot-time Get a good RMM software to manage patching and remote administration. Check with your leader if you need to add A/V.

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kennyj2011@reddit

Sorry to crap on this idea, but as a long time Linux admin, whatever you do won’t be appreciated or done correctly with the lack of experience. Many here are saying Linux is easy. It’s not that easy… and those who will be using these will most likely reinstall the OS anyway. No AV is a terrible idea, and it’s not difficult to setup an ldap integration with AD at the very least. It’ll be a great experience, and I wish you all the luck. As some here have said, if you can get your hands on a machine for yourself (even a VM)… that will be great for your own learning and support of the machines you are deploying.

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iBeJoshhh@reddit

Do not give them root access, add their user to sudo group so they can elevate permissions. If you give them root, you're asking for issues to happen.

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Admirable-Statement@reddit

Ubuntu 22.04 is a good choice, it's one of the LTS (long term support) releases. There's quite a few software packages that will only support LTS releases. Remote access might be difficult depending on whether you need CLI or GUI remote support. My recommendation for GUI would be: 1. Disable Wayland and revert to xorg/X11. Wayland is great but it makes remote access quite cumbersome due to additional security settings. 2. Install rustdesk, a simple TeamViewer like application. You can but don't have to configure a docker container to orchestrate connections, just makes it a little faster to connect. For CLI only access: 1. Setup tailscale on every device, this is like a split tunnel VPN that creates a mesh network with all the devices using a second interface. You can tag machines and setup cloud ACLs to prevent direct access between the devices if you want it to be more segregated. E.g. only "tech" machines can access "user" machines. 2. Enable tailscale SSH, this is a bit easier to manage than deploying and managing SSH keys if you're newer to Linux.

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bilvy@reddit

I haven’t seen anyone else post this so here’s a tip for drivers. Devices on Linux either just work out of the box or are incredibly difficult to fix. This is because Linux device drivers are included in the kernel. This isn’t usually a problem on most machines but many OEMs include proprietary hardware that may not be supported on Linux. Tl;dr: It’s very important to make sure that the hardware is compatible before you buy the workstations.

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way__north@reddit

Usually, its the newest hardware that can be a bit problematic. And Nvidia. some standard desktop from a reputable brand usually is well supported for drivers, especially if it has been out for a while

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Afro_Samurai@reddit

>setup GRUB (I'm not sure what that is still), To answer the particular question, GRUB is the bootloader. Not the only one but probably the most common on Linux. You also don't really need to worry about it for a normal install, one OS on one disk. Dual booting, putting the /home on a separate partition, etc has some details, but a lot of that is setup for you by the installer even then.

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dontmakemewait@reddit

Installing Linux is easy. It’s not the hell it used to be. But you need to set some parameters with you manager. Are they attaching back to your network? If so what are the security requirements? The installation is nothing, it the “compliance with corporate policy” that is going to be tricky. Also, what’s the point of remote access if you don’t know the OS? Who will be using it?

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blbd@reddit

Set aside one spare for QA and testing so you don't have production outages. Install that one manually with your preferred flavor of Ubuntu. Then setup any of the favorite virtualization tools on it. VirtualBox. Proxmox. KVM. Qemu. Whatever. Inside the virtual environment you can make a shitload of little VMs to nondestructively test everything. For the VMs use a combination of HashiCorp's tool Packer and the Ubuntu directions for automatic installations of their desktop OS and hammer away til you get familiar. https://github.com/canonical/autoinstall-desktop

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knightcrusader@reddit

Here's what I did, but I did it with a VM since it was for dev images running on Windows machines. I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on VirtualBox, installed admin accounts for myself and my boss to help remotely if needed, installed the apps they would all use, and then I stumbled on a neat trick that worked to my benefit - I hid the new accounts from GDDM, so the next time Ubuntu started up the user would get the OOBE wizard and could set up their own admin account for themselves. It was perfect. I exported this image and everyone downloaded it and installed their own version. Worked perfectly. Now in your case, I would probably do this once and then image the drive in the first machine and copy it to all the others.

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jollybot@reddit

You hiring?

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PickUpThatLitter@reddit

Ignore the distro requirement and install Arch…the engineers will either carry you around on their shoulders, or throw you off a cliff….

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PalmTreesandTech@reddit

I’ve been in the game 10 years. Got promoted fast and thrown in the fire fast. Just get the job done. You have AI to generate you best practice playbooks. Back in the days you actually had to read the fucking manual.

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ConstructionSafe2814@reddit

You could also try it in a VM. Much faster to reboot/retry. If you've got a hypervisor at your disposal, I'd advice that

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rLaw-hates-jews4@reddit

I assume they’re using Windows Pro, so they can just use Hyper-V.

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ConstructionSafe2814@reddit

Or type 2 for this purpose is just fine I guess. VirtualBox/VMware workstation, I don't know what other alternatives there are for Windows hosts.

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spfcraze2k@reddit

Once you have one system completed with all the drivers and applications you can clone it using clonezilla and restore that image on the other machines as long as they have the same hard drive space or bigger I do around 20 Linux system a day this way

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rLaw-hates-jews4@reddit

How do you make them unique? Do you have a script or run something?

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spfcraze2k@reddit

You'll have to change the UUID(s) in /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst. You can use Ubuntu install CD to get the UUID(s) or gparted or command line and make the changes - Yes someone created a script for me but I think that only works on our machines. But you can do a test run and see if any of your uuid or any other unique values stayed from the original clone. For Windows machines I just do a Sysprep and a unattended.xml before cloning

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RemmingtonBlack@reddit

i dont see why you would have to change the UUIDs for a clone... unnecessary... if that's what youre doing, you just may be wasting some time. The only thing you should have to change is IPs and hostnames (and possibly graphics drivers)  ...other than that though, I did agree with cloning at first, but then i am thinking, if you consider how fast ubuntu installs, I'm not sure how much of a benefit this would be for 12 machines? ...Although, getting the users to customize one machine to their liking, and cloning it, is also a sound argument... Still 50/50 for me, i think after you do it once, it will just fly the next 11 times. not to mention probably set his career on a different path

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spfcraze2k@reddit

For my use case we install our own custom server software we install and a lot of custom settings and the configuration of it all after a fresh install takes about 2 hours and we only use nvidia gpu so have that already installed doing that once saves a lot of time. Restore from golden image and I have a server ready to ship in 10mins and the install team do the rest for the IP setup. If I manually setup each server from scratch I would be lucky to do 5 a day.

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RemmingtonBlack@reddit

i no doubt think that would be ideal for you or I. cloning is a "dd" command for in the terminal, for me. ...I don't know if the nuance of cloning software would be adding to his learning curve? and how much more time will that cost? but, i do remember wrestling with nvidia.... i actually meant to add "and any other unconventional drivers", so yeah, i get your point there.

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nuaz@reddit

My opinion is this is a perfect opportunity for you to become specialized in your company. Learn everything you can about Linux and when they have issues you have the best understanding on how to fix it. Choice 1: “Manager, idk how to Linux” Choice 2: “Sounds like fun, haven’t touched it before but I’ll figure it out” before starting the installation ask them if they want it on the domain or anything specific so you can google those instructions.

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ifq29311@reddit

got that in bookmarks: [https://linuxtutor.github.io/](https://linuxtutor.github.io/) but please note, linux require linux-specific knowledge. almost nothing you have learned on windows will apply there. if you can't hire new linux admin, you're in for a wild ride there buddy.

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Lower_Fan@reddit

>but please note, linux require linux-specific knowledge. almost nothing you have learned on windows will apply there. if you can't hire new linux admin, OP please disregard this, system are systems and os are os. linux and windows have different architecture yes but it's not like you need to relearn how to use a computer from the ground up.

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ifq29311@reddit

i've seen more than enough windows admins that were completely clueless at even basic things in linux to know this aint true

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Lower_Fan@reddit

He doesn't need to. his task are 1. install Linux and 2. create a sudoer user for the Engineers

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ifq29311@reddit

oh i'm pretty sure he won't have issues when installing AMD drivers later on, or people complaining those stopped working when Ubuntu updates itself

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rLaw-hates-jews4@reddit

I’ve seen enough Windows admins be clueless about basic AD and GPOs that it really seems to depend more on the person.

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tcpWalker@reddit

Actually I think you could learn a massive, massive amount of linux in two weeks, we just don't usually teach it like that.

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way__north@reddit

> almost nothing you have learned on windows will apply there. but to the contrary, I find what I learn about linux can be useful also for windows

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arkane-linux@reddit

It should be fairly straight forward. Simply grab the latest Ubuntu 22.04 ISO and install it like normal. Make sure to install third party components when it asks. I recommend setting up automatic minor/security updates. For remote access it would be most ideal to simply use SSH, where we are going we do not require a GUI. This does mean these machines have to either be internet accessible once deployed or you need to ability to SSH-hop from another machine on the network. I recommend against trying TeamViewer-like applications, I have never had any luck with those, their Linux support tends to be utterly horrible. For SSH you will want to disable root login, and refuse password logins, only allow SSH keys. Entirely optional but fail2ban with sshd configured could be a nice to have also.  You mention you are going to install AMD GPUs later, will this be used for any type of productivity workload? If yes you will want to install amdgpu-pro, if no the by default installed amdgpu + Mesa stack still will be sufficient (and recommended). You can pre-install amdgpu-pro without the GPU being installed.  I recommend implementing the entire config in Ansible if time allows, it will allow you to quickly configure a new machine should one break, it also allows for you to easily using SSH push changes and tweaks later.

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PrincipleExciting457@reddit

They are remote, non-domain machines on laptop going out to devs. I think he’s putting a GUI on them for their purposes. Not server machine.

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arkane-linux@reddit

I know that. My comment on GUI was purely regarding remote management.

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PrincipleExciting457@reddit

This might a dumb question, since I’ve only home labbed Linux, but wouldn’t that require a VPN or forwarding rules on the remote users home router?

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arkane-linux@reddit

Yup. Since OP didn't mention how these machines will be deployed exactly I am assuming them to be deployed at the office and not at home, in which case this shouldn't be an issue.

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PrincipleExciting457@reddit

Thanks for confirming! If these didn’t have network access, what are some alternatives? I’ve never had a reason to really think about it before.

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arkane-linux@reddit

If the machine was not internet accessible and machine hopping is not an option either; then it could be configured to automatically connect to some type of VPN. The VPN should be configured in such a way that all machines connected to it can reach eachother. OpenVPN Cloud is fairly simple to set up and requires no infrastructure, it could provide this functionality.

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Raymich@reddit

Don’t forget to enroll their Ubuntu laptops into Intune, you can run custom compliance scripts to make sure devs don’t uninstall your security software.

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-my_dude@reddit

sudo rm rf /

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Angdrambor@reddit

It's not that hard. A few decades decades ago, a child(me) could do it, and I think things have only gotten easier since then. The OS and grub will be handled by the Ubuntu install disk(or usb key), and there's a good chance your drivers will be as well.

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_Foxtrot_@reddit

Macs are going to be easier to manage from an end-user perspective. Linux on your servers. I don't know if that's an option, but IMO you'll save money on the long run (they WILL brick their system at some point, it's par t of the nix life).

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ArsenalITTwo@reddit

Use Landscape. https://ubuntu.com/landscape

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ArsenalITTwo@reddit

What distribution are they asking for.

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3meterflatty@reddit

Give them Fedora instead they will like you a lot better especially if they are working with Amazon Linux etc

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Holiday_Inspector969@reddit

what ias stopping you from testing yourself ubuntu??

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The_Wkwied@reddit

It sounds like that you are going to be giving these PCs to power users who are already going to be knee deep in linux experience. If that's true, there is a very good possibility that the users are going to want to install the OS of their choice, and might be upset if you did something to their install that they didn't like..

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wosmo@reddit

grub's well off into "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" territory by now. The closest equivalent on windows is NTLDR - and if you've never heard of NTLDR, or never had to worry about it, it's for all the same reasons you're unlikely to have to worry about grub either.

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chalbersma@reddit

I'd definitely suggest the use of a tool like [salt stack](https://saltproject.io/) that gives you config management but will "talk back" to your central server. Setup a public sever in AWS or wherever you host public services and then you can control and push out updates to workstations as needed. Plus you'll have the ability to query devices on demand and if the machines are on you'll get an answer.

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Brandhor@reddit

grub is the bootloader(like bcd on windows) but unless you need dual booting you don't have to set it up, it's done automatically by the installer for the drivers just check if everything(ethernet, wifi, sound, bluetooth etc...) works for remote access tool I think there are a bunch like anydesk and rustdesk that works under linux but I never used them on linux so I can't really say installation is pretty straightforward, you can download the iso and try it in a vm first if you want, if you want to image/clone an installation you can use clonezilla troubleshooting is honestly gonna be an issue since you have no experience with linux, but just like with windows google is your best friend

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tcpWalker@reddit

And don't do dual booting, IME. You just wind up never using one of the OSes anyway.

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smitty_longmont@reddit

I’d make the installer as others suggested. From there I would find out what apps need to be installed on each machine, any settings that need to be standardized like machine name or an admin account and create a bash script to take care of those tasks. The script can also run updates etc. to get the machine fully patched. Store the bash file on your usb so you just have to pull it to the new machine, chmod +x and run it.

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Impossible_IT@reddit

I’m mainly a windows person as well. I have downloaded and installed Ubuntu in the past and played around with it. What I’ve also done is use hyper-v to install Rocky Linux to a VM. Google is your friend! You got this!

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sryan2k1@reddit

No engineer that uses Linux wants IT setting anything up. Give them a blank laptop and let em rip

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alexisdelg@reddit

Look into the foreman if you have any experience with puppet, it allows you to install is on workstations that are using DHCP boot

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shaunmccloud@reddit

Order 13 from System76 with Ubuntu instead of PopOS! (One for you). Problem solved and all the hardware will just work as they only sell Linux machines.

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JasonWorthing8@reddit

This is the way!

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databeestjenl@reddit

As others mention, use Ubuntu and do basic installations. Most other software is done through APT commands, so make a small shell script that runs "sudo apt -y install appxnamething" for things that you want/need. You can even put that in a txt file on a website and pipe that straight into a cmd line. Something like this here. [https://www.baeldung.com/linux/execute-bash-script-from-url](https://www.baeldung.com/linux/execute-bash-script-from-url) Think of this script not just as a means to install software, because it can contain anything you want. Download software straight from the web (like a VPN client) and install that locally with sudo. Or uninstall conflicting software. Because somewhere down the line you will discover that you want a different default editor/browser whatnot. Think of this as a poor mans MDM. I see that Teamviewer is supported on Linux too, if mgmt is willing to spend normal money (because Windows isn't either, cost of doing business) that should not be a problem. Don't bendover backwards if corp does not want to spend money, that leads exactly nowhere. Not sure how they are going to access their data, there are some Teams and sharepoint clients available. If you need VPN you are in for a rough ride, all the clients have some rough edges on Linux. Don't image, it \*will\* lead to issues down the road, and then attempt to get things straight again is a chore.

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colni@reddit

Would rust desk help for remote admin? https://rustdesk.com/docs/en/self-host/rustdesk-server-oss/ As others have said download and install it on a machine to get use to it. Since your knowledge isn't in Linux look into setting up a golden image then clone using clonezilla.

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colni@reddit

Also does it need to Ubuntu? Linux mint might be a better step from windows if the engineers haven't used Linux before.

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Stonewalled9999@reddit

Ubuntu IMHO is just as easy at Mint. I don't know what I am doing and I manage 30 Ubuntu servers at work (with the help of reddit and Google)

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0RGASMIK@reddit

Linux isn’t that hard it’s just a OS. There’s tons of tutorials and guides online. Just start with a test laptop and start messing around. Everyone had 0 experience with Linux when they started so you are not special, it’s not like everyone who used Linux today had someone holding their hand to learn. I will say it has some mysticism to it and everyone thinks it’s this OS that only the super smart use or something but it’s not. It’s just an OS, install it on a laptop you can take home and use it as your daily driver just to get used to it.

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mojito_drinker@reddit

Do you speak Ansible (or Puppet), sir? Do you know Bash? But you sure never deployed a productive Linux environment? Well, you could deploy something working, but wouldn’t be able to accurately verify your setup is safe and state of the art. I would refuse to do something I can’t do. At least I would ask for much more time. Don’t understand how such manger decisions are even possible, having IT security in mind…

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MrZaros@reddit

If you ever need to do a ton more, you could look into IGEL OS, really easy to make it work

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Prestigious-Past6268@reddit

Learn by doing. That’s the basic job description for everyone in IT. No one knows everything, and nature has a way of sneaking up on our ignorance like a shrieking eel that you’ve got to just wack on the head like your a manner of the brut squad and lifting the girl to safety

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eagle6705@reddit

Install and learn to at least image it...if you're giving engineers the keys to the kingdom we all know what kind of hell they'll be unleashing

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cubic_sq@reddit

“Make a friend” with a power user

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way__north@reddit

I'd start with downloading and installing the newest ubuntu 22.04 LTS on some spare computer / laptop at work just to start getting familiar with it

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