I’m looking to do something like autoinstall for my office but is there an easier way have my employees do their own thumb drive (remote users) and get the config they need from me? I’m looking for an MDM Intune like enrollment that’s easier and configured it a certain way. I’m not in a position to use and manage Puppet.
For long term management/enrollment you'd need to look at something beyond just putting stuff on the installer USB/ISO. Ubuntu has Landscape for this but there are some alternatives. Just depends on what you need to manage long term and what you can realistically do (e.g. you note you aren't in a spot to manage something like Puppet).
Deploy a gpg signed public script to periodically download and install updates from a public server. i.e. anyone that has to update knows the package is from you, and the machine role is pre-defined by you with a config file in "/etc/example/myhost.conf". If secrecy is required, than publish host specific encrypted public payloads named for their primary interface MAC.
This is how to handle clowns pulling drives in colocation data-centers.
Cheers =)