Yeah, I have this conversation and lot on the sad truth is that until there’s a Linux distro that’s as manageable as Windows is with Group Policy, no big organisation is adopting it. Unfortunately, nothing in the Linux space comes close.

To be honest, I used to have an ISP with dynamic addresses and it wasn’t a huge deal. The address only changed every month or two. I used afraid.org’s dynamic DNS service to get a dynamic address that followed the changes and created CNAME records for my real domain pointing at that. The actual connection was fucking awful but the dynamic IPs never caused any problems.

As for services: Nextcloud is well worth looking into for file sync and photo backup, especially if you’ve already got a file server running.

As it happens, I’ve just finished setting up a system exactly like this for a completely off-grid setup. I needed a Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant to be completely self-contained to monitor an adjacent, larger system that is only powered up intermittently (close enough that the two systems have a common ground).

Short version: the Raspberry Pi and the Huawei LTE router I’m using for connectivity draw a steady 9W between them (there’s a lot of monitoring going on). I went with an old pair of 80W panels in very suboptimal positioning, a simple MPPT charge controller and a 110Ah deep cycle leisure battery which costs about €45, €30 and €120 respectively. The system has been running a few months now and the battery had never, ever dropped below 12.4V. The Pi uses WireGuard to connect to my VPS so Home Assistant can be accessed with a web browser since the network I’m using on-site doesn’t do public IP addresses.

Something, something, neighbour’s lawn, sprinkler, something.

I’ve seen YaST used at a distance and I think it’s up to the job of managing servers and headless systems but, seriously, it’s not even close to Group Policy. I not trying to sound dismissive of alternatives - I really do want a FOSS replacement - but it is hard to overstate how flexible and granular Group Policy is.

I feel like a stuck record saying this, but if there was a serious contender to Group Policy on Linux I honestly think Windows in the workplace would be dead in five years.

Don’t you dare give me hope.

Edit: Holy shit. Orland actually says that exact line in the linked article. Kudos.

Yeah, ususally at this point someone goes “ugh, I’m never using Firefox again because Mozilla don’t respect people any more… iT’s TiMe To iNsTaLl BRaVe!”