0

We are currently building a team to refurbish and distribute old PCs and Laptops. Because we are doing this in our spare time and handing out the systems for free, we are trying to find an efficient workflow. We are leaning towards Kubuntu but that's not 100% certain yet.

challenges

  • very different specced machines (PCs and Laptops, dedicated and iGPUs, HDDs and SSDs in different sizes, etc.)
  • process must be as simple as possible for the end user (students and other people who might have never used Linux or even a Windows PC)
  • we want to customize the installation with additional packages

Our current plan looks something like this:

  1. Create a custom autoinstall iso OR create a script to configure the system after installation
  2. Run the OEM-installation on the machines (optionally run our own script)
  3. Finish the OEM installation and ship to end user

We found some resources for preseeding and autoinstall but these seem to be deprecated and/or only intended for server use

questions

  • what is the best way to achieve an unattended OEM-install for Kubuntu 20.04?
  • do you have any other tips or experience with this kind of workflow?
Willy Schalling
  • 1
  • 1
    Have a look at https://askubuntu.com/questions/1300540/how-to-duplicate-a-ubuntu-system-for-distribution Once you have created a Master .img image file, Etcher can flash it to multiple disks at once. – C.S.Cameron Feb 27 '21 at 01:02
  • I volunteered at ComputerBank Vic; we may have installed back in ~1998-99, but by Ubuntu years the drives were just cloned on mass, and during a 'build' a HDD/ssd (with cloned image) was inserted into box & it was booted, tested & tweaked. We didn't use OEM (I'm no longer there), but provided scripts that would re-set back to factory etc (they had some time with free phone support). I suspect a forum (https://ubuntuforums.org/) would be a better fit for your question than this site (drives were removed on donated boxes early so they could be dban'd during spec&check* phase) – guiverc Feb 27 '21 at 01:20

0 Answers0