I recently installed Ubuntu Mate from USB stick to a 120GB SSD. I then updated with all the latest patches. This took about 30 minutes.

I then tailored my preferences of Firefox, Terminal, Pluma, etc. Created a Guest account. Installed the NZ dictionary, and added some applications. This took me another 30 minutes.

I then needed to do this to 5 more computers. So, to prepare six computers would have taken me a total of about 6 hours.

I considered using the utility "dd" to copy a clone of my master disk. Looking through stackoverflow I found the suggestion to use "cat". I.e. Boot Ubuntu from a USB stick and assuming sda is my master disk and sdb is the clone, then issue the command...

$ sudo sh -c 'cat /dev/sda >/dev/sdb'

I found this copying took about 15 minutes. However, it didn't give me any progress report during the copying sequence. I then...

$ sudo apt install pv

...pv stands for "Pipe Viewer". For the next SSD drive to be cloned I issued the command...

$ sudo sh -c 'pv /dev/sda >/dev/sdb'

...which then provided a progress bar that updated every second.

With Samsung SSD 120GB drives I found the operation took 13 minutes 13 seconds with a transfer rate of 153MB/s.

I later had built another master SSD on a Kingston 120GB SSD and cloned this to another Kingston 120GB SSD which took 10 minutes and had a transfer rate of 200MB/s.

I found with the system still powered on, I could unplug the cloned SSD and plug in another blank SSD and start another cloning. Probably not a recommended practice.

After booting the clone, I edited /etc/hostname to make each clone unique. Maybe there's something else I should change???

In summary, allowing for a bit of time to physically move the SSD's between machines, I was effectively completing the installation/updating/tailoring at a rate of three PC's an hour.

I dunno if this was the right way or the best way, but, so far, the masters and all the clones seem to be working OK.

cheers,