Updating Free Software in the Enterprise?

wallykeyster asks: "I'm an IT Director for a small private university in the U.S., and we are largely a Microsoft shop. We pay over $15,000 each year for our Campus Agreement so that we can upgrade the desktop OS to our version of choice, run Office, and have some Client Access Licenses. I would like to move to FOSS solutions, but I'm having trouble finding support for Enterprise management. For example, OpenOffice and Firefox (both of which I use personally) would be easy first steps, but IE is updated automatically via our SUS server (and settings pushed to clients via group policies) and Office updates will be included soon. How are other larger organizations (i.e. more than 200 desktops) dealing with software deployment and updates? Is anyone using Zen with Novell Desktop Linux?"

Comments

apt-get upgrade <list>?

[Doc Ruby]

Debian's apt-get lets me crontab an 'apt-get upgrade', but that upgrades every package in the system. The "Debian way" seems to be to maintain a local package repository, in the versions I want, and upgrade against that. But how do I automate the upgrade of just those packages? Is there any apt tool that lets me maintain just a local list of packages to maintain at the "latest" version (including dependencies, of course)?

Re:It's a little late for that...

[Master of Transhuman]

Computer - Install mod spellchecker.

"Yes, Captain - mod installed"

Computer - Run spellcheck on parent post.

"Running spellcheck..."

"One error found - 'sheilds' should be spelled 'shields'"

Computer, disable parent access to the Net.

"Running...Parent disabled."