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).
- 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))
- 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
- Community or Company Distro?
- A. Community Distro
- B. Company Distro
- Display server protocol:
- A. Xorg
- B. Wayland
- File System:
- A. EXT4
- B. BTRFS
- C. Other
- Immutable?
- A. Not Immutable
- B. Immutable
- 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.
Look at what schools in your area are using. Pick that.
If I had to make a recommendation outside that one: RHEL. You’re literally their target audience.
Package update frequency:
With Ubuntu and with Debian there is also LTS (Long Term Support) to choose from. For Ubuntu this is five years for the default Ubuntu. I believe it is three years for the community flavors (Kubuntu, Xubuntu and so on). Personally I find the pushing of snaps and Ubuntu Pro by Ubuntu somewhat annoying and confusing, so I'd for Debian at your school.
Check zorin os, it's Ubuntu LTS with a familiar look, and wine well integrated. Veyon sw then is probably good for pc control
I'd use fedora atomic, specifically ublue, because you can fully control what the os is.
- It installs updates while it runs and at the next boot it boots into the updated image. If an update fails, it boots into the old image.
- Most people don't know WM. Use a DE. It doesn't matter which one you use KDE or GNOME. Both are stable and solid. It's up to you. Maybe choose it based on the apps you use.
- Other questions are redundant.
- https://universal-blue.org/ https://github.com/ublue-os if you're interested, use https://blue-build.org/ and your own OS is ready to go within minutes.
- I'd say go for a rolling, maybe do updates on weekends
- 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
- Doesn't really matter, company distros might be paid tho, and that can obviously get expensive
- Wayland if your DE has good support (i.e. is GNOME or Plasma), otherwise X
- Btrfs' snapshotting capabilities might be useful to rollback the system to something working if the students fuck something up
- Immutable without sudo access should be the safest to hand over to people that you don't want to ruin anything
- I don't know enough about specific purpose distros
If you already know Nix, NIxOS would be a good choice
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).
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.
