Windows Ansible Playbook

This playbook installs and configures most of the software I use on my Windows 11 machine for software development.

Contents

• Playbook capabilities
• Installation
• Windows host prerequisites installation
• Ansible control node prerequisites installation
• Running a specific set of tagged tasks
• Overriding Defaults
• Included Applications / Configuration (Default)
• Available Parameters

Playbook capabilities

NOTE: The Playbook is fully configurable. You can skip or reconfigure any task by Overriding Defaults.

• Software
  • Remove Bloatware (see default config for a complete list of Bloatware).
  • Install software and packages selected by the user via Chocolatey.
  • Install software and packages selected by the user via WinGet.
• Windows apps & features
  • Install and Enable Optional Windows Features chosen by the user.
  • Install and Enable the WSL2 distro selected by the user.
  • Run defragmentation on volumes selected by the user (in parallel).
• Windows Settings
  • Explorer
    • Enable Explorer file extensions in file names.
    • Open Explorer in the Computer view by default.
    • Disable the Ribbon menu in Windows Explorer.
    • Enable Right-click Context Menu (Windows 11).
  • Start Menu
    • Disable Automatic Install of Suggested Apps.
    • Disable the "App Suggestions" in the Start menu.
    • Disable the "tips" popup.
    • Disable 'Windows Welcome Experience'.
  • Taskbar
    • Unpin 'Search' from Taskbar.
    • Unpin Task View, Chat, and Cortana from Taskbar.
    • Unpin 'News and Interests' from Taskbar.
    • Unpin 'People' from Taskbar.
    • Unpin 'Edge', 'Store' and other built-in shortcuts from the Taskbar.
  • Desktop
    • Remove Desktop icons (Ink).
  • General
    • Set the hostname selected by the user is assigned.
    • Configure remote desktop services.
    • Set the sound scheme to 'No sounds'.
    • Set the power plan selected by the user.
    • Install Windows updates categories selected by the user.
    • Disable mouse acceleration.
• Terminal Settings
  • Install oh-my-posh with the theme chosen by the user and it set as a default PowerShell theme engine.

Installation

Prepare your Windows host ⏲

This playbook was tested on Windows 10 2004 and Windows 11 21H2 (Pro, Ent). Other versions may work but have not tried.

Copy and paste the code below into your PowerShell terminal to get your Windows machine ready to work with Ansible.

[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12
$url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AlexNabokikh/windows-playbook/master/setup.ps1"
$file = "$env:temp\setup.ps1"

(New-Object -TypeName System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile($url, $file)
powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -File $file -Verbose

Ansible Control node 🕹

1. Install Ansible:

   1. Upgrade Pip: pip3 install --upgrade pip
   2. Install Ansible: pip3 install ansible

2. Clone or download this repository to your local drive.

3. Run ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml inside this directory to install required Ansible collections.

4. Add the IP address and credentials of your Windows machine into the inventory file

5. Run ansible-playbook main.yml inside this directory.

Running a specific set of tagged tasks

You can filter which part of the provisioning process to run by specifying a set of tags using ansible-playbook --tags flag. The tags available are choco , debloat , desktop , explorer , fonts , hostname , mouse , power , sounds , start_menu , taskbar , updates , windows_features , wsl, winget.

ansible-playbook main.yml --tags "choco,wsl"

Overriding Defaults

NOTE: You can override any of the defaults configured in default.config.yml by creating a config.yml file and setting the overrides in that file. For example, you can customize the installed packages and enable/disable specific tasks with something like:

configure_hostname: true
custom_hostname: myhostname

install_windows_updates: true
update_categories:
  - Critical Updates
  - Security Updates
  - * # Installs all updates

choco_installed_packages:
  # installs latest version of the Google Chrome while ignoring the package checksum
  - name: googlechrome
    state: latest
    choco_args: --ignorechecksum
  # installs 2.37.1 version of the git
  - name: git
    version: "2.37.1"
  # installs GO, but won't update it
  - golang

install_fonts: true
installed_nerdfonts:
  - Meslo

install_ohmyposh: true
ohmyposh_theme: agnoster

install_windows_features: true
windows_features:
  Microsoft-Hyper-V: true

install_wsl2: true
wsl2_distribution: wsl-archlinux

remove_bloatware: true
bloatware:
  - Microsoft.Messaging

Included Applications / Configuration (Default)

Packages (installed with Chocolatey):

• adobereader
• auto-dark-mode
• awscli
• Firefox
• git
• golang
• jre8
• kubernetes-cli
• microsoft-windows-terminal
• peazip
• powertoys
• python3
• sharex
• telegram
• terraform
• vlc
• vscode
• zoom

Available Parameters

Author

This project was created by Alexander Nabokikh (initially inspired by geerlingguy/mac-dev-playbook).

License

This software is available under the following licenses:

• MIT