I admin a small Edu/MakerSpace, and we have a few donated pieces of equipment that require a Windows-based OS to run the controlling app.
I have tried looking for & tested a Linux/POSIX-based versions of the apps, but I'm not getting the buy-in to make it feasible.
The systems came with (licenced, proprietary) controlling software, so it's a bundled deal. Luckily these apps have nice web-interfaces (for the most part), so a full desktop is not required.
I'm trying to shrink our 'footprint' - reducing the number of boxes I need to maintain, and dedicating & maintaining an entire PC/laptop to run a single app is not ideal.
What I'd like to do is spin up a minimal headless Windows OS, install the apps over RDP, winget/choco or CLI.
I'm not exactly a Win SysAdmin, but I've been coming around of late.
I see that there are some nifty options that may suit my needs, in particular:
winget, as mentioned- Windows Admin Center - which is super cool, as it allows for 'fleet' admin by members besides myself
- Windows Server Core & Nano Server - the headless solution I seek (I think?)
So, ideally, I just what a just-enough base windows-OS to install the requisite app & remotely admin the host.
It's not super-intuitive from what I've read IF these images (in last link) are images/stacks run IN/ON TOP of a pre-existing VM/container stack, or if they are the underlying OS binaries TO HOST containers on top.
For the single-purpose baremetal I hope to run this on, I don't really need the overhead of a full hypervisor or container infrastructure: I just wanna run a minimal OS for a single app.
If I can run a familiar skinny POSIX host (eg. Debian) for a minimal Docker for a single W32/64 OS+app, with minimal resource overhead, I can live with that, but if that's an avoidable complexity, that would be my preference.
