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
  • Ensures Bloatware is removed (see default config for a complete list of Bloatware).
  • Ensure software and packages selected by the user are installed via Chocolatey.
• Windows apps & features
  • Ensures the Optional Windows Features chosen by the user are installed and enabled.
  • Ensures the WSL2 distro selected by the user is installed and enabled.
  • Ensures set by user volumes are defragmented (in parallel).
• Windows Settings
  • Explorer
    • Ensures Explorer includes the file extension in file names.
    • Ensures Explorer opens itself to the Computer view.
    • Ensures the Ribbon menu is disabled in Windows Explorer.
    • Ensures Right-click Context Menu enabled (Windows 11).
  • Start Menu
    • Ensures Automatic Install of Suggested Apps disabled.
    • Ensures the "App Suggestions" in the Start menu is disabled.
    • Ensures the "tips" popup Windows disabled.
    • Ensures 'Windows Welcome Experience' is disabled.
  • Taskbar
    • Ensures 'Search' unpinned from Taskbar.
    • Ensures Task View, Chat, and Cortana are unpinned from Taskbar.
    • Ensures 'News and Interests' unpinned from Taskbar.
    • Ensures 'People' unpinned from Taskbar.
    • Ensures 'Edge', 'Store' and other built-in shortcuts unpinned from Taskbar.
  • Desktop
    • Ensure Desktop icons are removed.
  • General
    • Ensure configured hostname selected by the user is assigned.
    • Ensure remote desktop services are configured.
    • Ensure the sound scheme is set to 'No sounds'.
    • Ensure the power plan selected by the user is assigned.
    • Ensure Windows updates are selected by the user installed.
    • Ensures mouse acceleration is disabled.
• Terminal Settings
  • Ensures oh-my-posh with the theme chosen by the user is 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 .

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

Name	Description	Type	Default
configure_hostname	(Optional) Whether or not to set a custom hostname.	bool	false
custom_hostname	(Optional) The hostname to set for the computer.	string	windows-ansible
install_windows_updates	(Optional) Whether or not to install Windows updates.	bool	true
update_categories	(Optional) A list of categories to install updates from. The value * will match all categories.	list	["CriticalUpdates", "SecurityUpdates", "UpdateRollups"]
windows_updates_reboot	(Optional) Whether or not to reboot the host if it is required and continue to install updates after the reboot.	bool	true
remove_bloatware	(Optional) Whether or not to uninstall Windows bloatware.	bool	true
bloatware	(Optional) A list of applications (bloatware) to be uninstalled	list	full_list
choco_installed_packages	(Required) A list of Chocolatey packages to be installed.	list	full_list
state (chocolatey)	(Optional) State of the package on the system. (present, latest)	string	present
version (chocolatey)	(Optional) Specific version of the package to be installed.	string	omit
choco_args (chocolatey)	(Optional) Additional parameters to pass to choco.exe.	string	omit
install_windows_features	(Optional) Whether or not to install Windows features.	bool	false
windows_features	(Optional) A list of dicts with Windows features to be installed.	list(dict)	Microsoft-Hyper-V: true
install_wsl2	(Optional) Whether or not to install Windows Subsystem for Linux.	bool	true
wsl2_distribution	(Optional) The valid name of Linux distribution that will be installed.	string	wsl-ubuntu-2004
install_fonts	(Optional) Whether or not to install Nerd Fonts.	bool	true
installed_nerdfonts	(Optional) A list of Nerd Fonts to be installed.	list	["FiraCode", "FantasqueSansMono"]
install_ohmyposh	(Optional) Whether or not to Oh My Posh.	bool	true
configure_explorer	(Optional) Whether or not to configure Windows Explorer with sane defaults.	bool	true
configure_taskbar	(Optional) Whether or not to configure Windows TaskBar with sane defaults.	bool	true
configure_start_menu	(Optional) Whether or not to configure Windows Start menu with sane defaults.	bool	true
set_sound_scheme	(Optional) Whether or not to set default Windows Sound Scheme to "No Sounds".	bool	true
disable_mouse_acceleration	(Optional) Whether or not to disable mouse acceleration.	bool	true
remote_desktop_enabled	(Optional) Whether or not enable Remote Desktop.	bool	true
remove_desktop_icons	(Optional) Whether or not remove desktop icons (*.lnk files only).	bool	false
defrag_volumes	(Optional) Whether or not to perform disk defragmentation.	bool	true
include_volumes	(Optional) A list of volumes to be defragmented.	list	["C"]
change_power_plan	(Optional) Whether or not change Power Plan.	bool	true
power_plan	(Optional) Choose a power plan (high_performance, balanced, power_saver).	string	high_performance

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