Not sure if this is the right place for it, but would anyone be interested in assisting an MSP in helping refine our Linux Stack?
Our goal is to take companies that are currently using a Windows stack and move them over without too much retraining on the user’s part.
Our current stack is Linux Mint, LibreOffice, a custom RMM agent, and a few bits and bobs that differ per client, but that’s all malleable. We have a stack, I’m just interested in anything that may make it better. Of note, we donate to FOSS monthly for roughly the licensing fees of the non-FOSS alternative that the clients would be using.
EDIT: Further info for some incredibly hostile replies who are seeking to purposely get offended…
As an MSP, the monthly client fee remains the same regardless of if the clients are on Linux, MacOS, or Windows. I assure you, we’re not winning new converts with Linux and hoping to capture some untapped market. This isn’t a money-maker. We are avoiding e-waste and upcycling machines for free on our own dime. If the client doesn’t want to convert, we donate the systems when they are discarded to one of the nonprofits we support for free. Again, switching clients to Linux wouldn’t make us any money as we don’t bill for project fees. If anything it would make us less money because we’re not trying to sell new objects to the client and are signing ourselves up to train and deploy to them. There’s no sneaky evil hidden agenda here.
I was never looking for someone to design the entire implementation, just one or two comments saying something to the tune of “X distro / software is easier for newbies, take a look!” or something.
This is a bad idea
MSPs serve the customer not the other way around. Don’t go off the beaten trail until you are MSP that has been around for 5 years or more. This isn’t going to go well for many reasons.
We have been around for nearly 11 years now and have had a few requests for something that isn’t Microsoft or Apple. We agree with the clients.
From a MSP perspective you could look at something like Chrome OS or Android. Android especially has lots of support from various vendors and is pretty easy to manage.
Going off the beaten path is probably not going to work out. I’m saying that as someone who has a decent amount of experience with Linux desktops. The reality is Linux desktops are really hard to manage at scale because of the diversity of the ecosystem and the lack of interest. Everything from the security tooling to monitoring is going to be tricky. If you find some vendors that can do it that is great but good luck. Linux distros are not design to be enterprise desktops. You need to figure out Authentication, monitoring, policy and configuration and most importantly security.
I would look into Xfce4 Kiosk mode with a bare bones Linux system that has SElinux configured to lock everything down. You can deploy policy via Ansible Pull and a systemd timer. That still won’t solve monitoring, security or remote access but it will at least get you started. I would read up on TPM chips as Linux does support them for encryption but you need to make sure that you configure them properly. You also should make sure you have a way to remotely trigger a wipe. From a distros perspective I would stick with something like Almalinux or Debian stable along with system flatpacks for apps. (Make sure you lock down the ability for users to install apps)