The hardward guideline is slightly ambiguous. Do Workstations require the version of Windows to be "PROFESSIONAL" or does just the MAIN COMPUTER have this requirement?
It was deliberately ambiguous in the software department as it was a hardware guideline. My recommendation would be to always use Professional on the desktops. There are numerous benefits including the ability to join a domain, Bitlocker encryption (Windows 8+/7 Ultimate), advanced networking/sharing features, network backup, and more. If you think you might want server/client in the future, Professional is recommended.
I'll be covering this more in another post but with Windows 10, it's almost mandatory to get Professional since the home edition can get updates that break your programs. Since Microsoft laid off a lot of their testers for Windows, home users are the new beta testers. Even the Professional users will eventually be forced to upgrade, but they get the updates after the updates are stable for the home users. If you plan to use Windows 10 on your server, you would want to get Windows 10 Enterprise Long Term Service Branch as its the only one that doesn't get forced updates. This forces users to move to Windows Server with the new version of Windows or get Enterprise LTSB which is hard to find.
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