I use an Ansible playbook to do fresh install stuff such as app installs & joining my local Samba AD.
Another option, that I've never tried, would be to put your /home directory on another partition. That only solves the settings though and not your app installation bit.
Correct. I'm running two AD DC's based on Samba, all running on Zentyal. Super simple to install & setup. I them run a VM in Virtualbox on my laptop for the rare occasions I need to use the Windows RSAT tools.
Other than that, all my Linux VM's, ProxMox hosts & unRAID NAS all set to auth against the Samba DC. It has been working perfectly for over a year now.
I don't believe Zentyal is supported by the Samba team. I'd just stick to regular Samba DCs.
I am personally debating on setting up either Samba AD or FreeIPA. FreeIPA is definitely better for Linux but I really like Samba. Thanks for answering my question.