Hey all,

I have done research on this with little to no success. I would like to know if there is a open-source tool on Ubuntu Server or any Linux Server OS that will distribute and manage software deployment to client computers that all use windows OS.

Basically, scan a computer and get a list of software and patches installed, and then make sure that all computers have all softwares install on a master list from the server. So when a new computer joins the domain, if there is a software that is not installed, it will automatically install it.

You can say it is similar to Windows Server GPO software distribution.

Thanks for your help and avice.

I don't know how likely it is that you will find Open Source Software cross-platform patch management solutions that run on Linux and cater solely to mcrsft victims clients. In any case the biggest proprietary, commercially licensed products AFAIK are (and have been for some time AFAIK) PatchLink Update Server, BigFix Enterprise Suite and Novell ZENworks Patch Management.

* Also since this in essence targets a non-Linux non-*NIX platform I'll move the thread to the /General forum.

http://wpkg.org/

It's no turnkey solution, you're gonna have to configure it. It doesn't work with every program but it works with a lot of them. I used it to help with initial software installs and keep several programs up-to-date over the course of several months (until we decided to switch to a minimal software set to overcome some compatibility issues and in light of a better handle on user requirements).

It requires an initial install of the wpkg client, usually manually or possibly by other software management. But after that everything is handled from the config files on the server. It can work with any SMB file server - Windows, Linux, NAS, whatever.

In conjunction with http://www.wsusoffline.net/ you can use it to handle Windows Updates. This avoids having every computer in your office download the updates individually, reducing your bandwidth usage.

Note I never got WPKG to work right with wireless networking, it seems the WPKG service starts before the network is up and so errors out. But if you're using wired it should work fine.