Seeing as Ansible is out of the question, what would be the best and/or simplest of these tools to learn and use on a Windows client (with Vagrant, remote Linux server etc).
I want to choose one of them but can't decide which one to pick.
The simplest one I've found other than Ansible that supports Windows is Saltstack. But it does require a master and isn't quite as intuitive as Ansible imo but close.
I can't speak to best or simplest yet. Puppet, Chef, and Salt all support Windows clients.
I would try writing the same recipe in each of them and see which works best for you. All of them can now support easy, domain-specific languages in JSON or YAML.
Puppet is the oldest and has the largest community. Chef is almost as old and large and seems most popular with the Rails community. Salt is the youngest and has the most active contributors.
I want to choose one of them but can't decide which one to pick.