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Help me choose linux's best option for public school lab (distro, desktop, etc.)

I apologize if my english isn't perfect in how you would say it daily, but I hope it'll help with Linux popularity and as a reference for future days.

For this post specifically I want opinions regarding what would be best for school lab of tech vocational high school (for both computer networking and software engineering).

  1. Package update frequency:
  • A. Years per update (Debian, OpenSuse Leap)
  • B. Every 6 month (Ubuntu/Fedora)
  • C. Rolling Release (Debian Sid or Arch but update whenever (every week/month/semester/year))
  1. Desktop environment:
  • A. Gnome
  • B. KDE Plasma
  • C. Cinnamon
  • D. Lightweight DE (XFCE, LXQT, etc.)
  • E. Other DE (Mate, Budgie, etc.)
  • F. Stacking Window Manager (Fluxbox, IceWM, Openbox, etc)
  • G. TIling or Dynamic WM
  1. Community or Company Distro?
  • A. Community Distro
  • B. Company Distro
  1. Display server protocol:
  • A. Xorg
  • B. Wayland
  1. File System:
  • A. EXT4
  • B. BTRFS
  • C. Other
  1. Immutable?
  • A. Not Immutable
  • B. Immutable
  1. Functionality
  • A. General Purpose (Debian, Arch, OpenSuse)
  • B. Specific Purpose (Debian Edu, Parrot Linux, AV linux, etc.)

Let me know your opinion, perhaps I missed some critical question or maybe some question above isn't that important to consider.

44 comments
  • You word structure is a little odd but I think I can figure out what you are trying to ask.

    If you looking for desktops I would focus on stability and reliability. For the desktop you could use something premade like Linux mint or you could roll your own with custom Xfce4 configs.

    The real question is how you are going to manage this. I assume you have some sort of active directory environment but your group policy will not work on Linux. I would setup Ansible so that you can manage all the desktops in one place. You can create a Ansible playbook that domain joins the machines and then sets up the system.

  • Kubuntu and Fedora KDE are probably the safest options. Linux Mint (Cinnamon) should also work. I'd go with KDE, as it looks and feels similar to Windows, which will make it easier to learn for new users. Cinnamon is another great choice for new users. The file system doesn't really matter, ext4 should be fine.

  • Opensuse tumbleweed. Its rolling release and gets lots of packages and is pretty stable NASA uses opensuse for there computers. I run tumbleweed on my laptop and btfs is really good and i havent had any issues minus one time i forced powered off while it was updating and it broke zypper. Plus side tho is the live boot can "upgrade an install and fix things like broken package managment. Aswell as opensuse is based off of rhel so package support is really good

  • I'd go with a stable distro, like Debian, or Mint if you wanted something that's also rather stable and easier to use (Ubuntu underlying structure has a lot of fixes/changes compared to debian).

  • Check zorin os, it's Ubuntu LTS with a familiar look, and wine well integrated. Veyon sw then is probably good for pc control

  • @Fint0034 For those who have never used a Linux distro I would recommend first installing a VM to test a distro without damaging the local system. My suggestion is to always start with well-known and friendly distros like Ubuntu or MINT.

    1. I'd say go for a rolling, maybe do updates on weekends
    2. The students will very likely appreciate the customizability of Plasma or Cinnamon; if you want them to focus on work, GNOME (probably with some extensions) would be better. Tilers are a bad idea, because they take some getting used to
    3. Doesn't really matter, company distros might be paid tho, and that can obviously get expensive
    4. Wayland if your DE has good support (i.e. is GNOME or Plasma), otherwise X
    5. Btrfs' snapshotting capabilities might be useful to rollback the system to something working if the students fuck something up
    6. Immutable without sudo access should be the safest to hand over to people that you don't want to ruin anything
    7. I don't know enough about specific purpose distros

    If you already know Nix, NIxOS would be a good choice

44 comments