Samba and software deployment

Source: http://www.wlug.org.nz

Software deployment is a useful feature of a domain controller, as it allows to distribute software to many clients - and thus, the administrator doesn't have to walk from one workstation to another (10, 20, ... 100 machines...) to install the same piece of software (and uninstall it or upgrade a couple of days later).

One common misconception when comparing Samba to Active Directory, is that with Samba you can't deploy software to your Windows workstations. Another misconception, this time about Active Directory, is that with AD you can deploy software to your workstations. 

So, what's this all about?

Active Directory can only deploy packages in MSI format. This isn't very widely used; mostly software is available in EXE format.

With Samba, as in whole *NIX philosophy, one tool does the job, but does it well.

To distribute software with Samba, one can use WPKG - with this tool, you just configure the software which should be installed / upgraded / uninstalled on a given machine or a group of machines - and next time these Windows workstations are booted, the software you specified is installed / upgraded / uninstalled automatically.