If you don't trust your employees, though, why give them Linux at all? Windows and Mac make the perfect locked down / restrictive / don't trust people platforms out there. I mean, I understand locking down and securing a server, but a Linux desktop? The only value a Linux desktop has is the freedom to configure it how you like with the apps you like.
This seems like a minefield of clashes with distro-specific behavior. What happens if your system is using different software than what it expects or a policy that exists in Windows doesn't always make sense in the target environment? I wonder how it is being dealt with?
And what about more broad policies like denying filesystem write access?
My experience is quite the opposite. I have and still use both and find samba one of the more unreliable things. Freeipa does what it does with no issues.
Ironically I was trying to push for some rnd to run all of the GPOs for windows boxes as local policy ran by ansible. Just could stand all of the wonkyness AD introduced into the system.
We were doing everything Ansible does for the 95% case in 2002. Like, for 95% of use-cases, Ansible is absolutely no better than a conglomeration of tools from 2002. Definitely no reason to pay licensing.
Bonus: since it's version-agnostic (another win over Ansible if you've ever managed Tower/AAP/whatever next week) I'm still using that paradigm today because it works SO well. It's losing to Cinc or mgmtConfig but only because those are 1 and 2 generations newer than Ansible and do offer distinguishing features.
Ansible is foss, free of cost and requires almost no additional overhead or hardware.
Um, why are you stressing foss ? I only ask because the 2002 kit was
cron
make
awk
at
rpm
'It's foss' isn't really a selling point, here, since ansible is still outmatched by everything else available -- including that gaggle of tools from 22 years ago.
... which was foss.
The only thing Ansible has going for it is momentum; and cult-people who haven't seen Chef or even that aforementioned tool-bag. Heaven forbid someone sees MgmtConfig converging 1000 machines in under a second immediately after a file is changed on one (ergo no playbook run taking 10 minutes). They'd be crying every day afterward that they were still stuck on worse-than-2002-technology Ansible. At 2002, Ansible pre-dates GOOGLE MAPS for technology; and facebook; and the iPhone. Ansible is the MapQuest Printout of technology.
The new tech is so reactive, it can revert a file back to conformity immediately after it's saved; before it can be reopened!
AND IT'S STILL OPEN SOURCE. Of course. Because that's a no-brainer.