Ansible Workstation

Set up a fully featured Workstation using a single Ansible script 🚀

🌟 Features

• Idempotency: It can be executed repeatedly without causing unintended changes.
• Customization: It is customized through variables, being flexible and allowing conditional execution.
• Modularity: The entire script is divided into modules (roles).

🔘 Available roles

• Alacritty (OpenGL terminal emulator)
• Albert (Desktop agnostic launcher)
• Ansible
• Audacious (Music Player)
• Audacity (Audio editor)
• Azure CLI (Command-line tool for managing Azure resources)
• Blueman (Bluetooth Manager)
• Brave Web Browser
• checksum-utils 👀 (CLI tool to manage the checksum of your files)
• DBeaver (Database Manager)
• DevToys (A Swiss Army knife for developers)
• Docker
• Dotnet (.NET support)
• Enpass (Password manager)
• Fastfetch (Neofetch alternative)
• Firewall (UFW)
• FreeTube (YouTube client app)
• Gimp (Image editor)
• Git (Version control system)
• Golang (Go lang support)
• GParted (Disk partition manager)
• Helm (Package manager for Kubernetes)
• Hugo (Static web site generator)
• Joplin (Note-taking and organization tool)
• Kubectl (Kubernetes command-line tool)
• LibreWolf Web Browser (Privacy-focused web browser based on Firefox)
• Minikube (Local Kubernetes for testing)
• MKVToolnix (MKV files editor)
• OBS Studio (Streaming/Recording software)
• Plex (Plex client for desktop)
• Plexamp (Plex audio player)
• Postman (API testing tool)
• Raspberry Pi Imager (Format Raspberry Pi MicroSD cards)
• Shell tools:
  • ZSH
  • OhMyZSH
  • Powerlevel10K
• Telegram (Messenger app)
• Terraform (Infrastructure as code)
• Tmux (Terminal multiplexer)
• Ungoogled Chromium Web Browser (Google Chrome without Google)
• Vagrant (Tool for building and managing virtualized environments)
• Vim (Command line text editor)
• VirtualBox
• VLC Media Player
• Volta (Node.js versions manager)
• VSCodium (VSCode without Microsoft)
• Xfce4 ⚡ (FTW!)

📌 Requirements

Control node

• It must run a full Linux environment or WSL.
• Ansible (> 2.15.0) installed.
• Should have connectivity with the managed nodes.

Managed nodes

• It must run a Debian based environment (Debian, Ubuntu, etc).

💻 Installation

1. Clone this repo or download it in your Ansible Control node:

   git clone https://github.com/JMOrbegoso/ansible-workstation.git
   cd ansible-workstation

2. ✏️ Edit the inventory/hosts.yaml file:

   vim ./inventory/hosts.yaml

3. ✏️ Edit the playbook file according to your needs (Removing unwanted roles, setting some variables, etc):

   vim ./workstation.yaml

4. ✏️ Edit the variable files:

   vim ./group_vars/all/main.yaml
   vim ./group_vars/workstation/main.yaml

5. 🔒 Create your ansible vault:

   ansible-vault create ./group_vars/workstation/secrets.yaml

6. 🛜 Check connectivity with your managed nodes:

   ansible workstation -m ping --ask-vault-pass --ask-pass

7. 🚀 Run the playbook:

   ansible-playbook workstation.yaml --ask-become-pass --ask-vault-pass --ask-pass

❓ FAQ

Customize how roles work

Values

Some roles can be customized by editing the values ​​of their variables.

To find out which variables are supported, you can check the main.yaml file inside the defaults folder within each role.

For example: roles/librewolf/defaults/main.yaml.

So, considering the ansible variable precedence you should set the new value of the variable in your group_vars/workstation/main.yaml.

Files

Some roles can copy configuration files, icons, certificates, etc.

To customize which files are copied you can edit them in the shared_files folder:

For example: shared_files/alacritty/alacritty.yaml.

Run a role multiple times with different variable values

To execute a role multiple times with different variable values just declare the value of the variables in the playbook instead of the group_vars/workstation/main.yaml:

- role: 'fastfetch'
  vars:
    fastfetch_role_user_name: 'tux'

- role: 'fastfetch'
  vars:
    fastfetch_role_user_name: 'duke'

Use a desktop environment other than Xfce4

Currently only Xfce4 is supported, but if your managed nodes already have a desktop environment installed: Just remove the xfce4 role from your playbook file.

Best environment to setup this ansible script

This script has been tested on Debian 12 based desktops and laptops without a desktop environment.

👤 Author

JMOrbegoso

• Website: www.jmorbegoso.dev
• Blog: blog.jmorbegoso.dev
• Github: @JMOrbegoso
• LinkedIn: @jmorbegosodev

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues and feature requests are welcome!
Feel free to check issues page.

⭐️ Show your support

Give a ⭐️ if this project helped you!

📝 License

Copyright © 2024 JMOrbegoso.
This project is MIT licensed.