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.
I’m going to say Debian or RHEL. Both are extremely well supported by software and very stable, but you’d get administration benefits with RHEL that you would be missing with Debian. Since these computers are public-facing I’m going to STRONGLY recommend against smaller distros like Zorin or Manjaro.
Debian and RHEL are proven to be stable for professional work. Debian is especially notable for being on the space station. RHEL is used by basically every company that uses Linux in an enterprise environment.
I think you are missing the most critical features, stability and support. You need whatever distro you pick to be solid. No one cares about the file system or whether it is immutable or not, your users need the computer to work when they use it, and nothing else matters.
You also need to be confident you can update and upgrade safely and easily, any risk of a broken update will make your life a misery when that happens.
Kickstart support, or some form of automated deployment will also be extremely valuable so that you can easily redeploy broken boxes with minimal effort. And some form of remote config/admin will also be extremely valuable. You dont want to have to do updates manually one at a time.
I would pick a general purpose commercially backed OS, so that if you need it later, you can pay for support if there is a problem. And you need to write some basic usage guides, because no matter which distro you pick, if its not Windows, your users will complain when they cant do X the same way it works on Windows.
This 100%. Even if you don’t like canonical, you can get Ubuntu for free and then later pay for support if you need. They have experience managing fleets of systems.
There’s a post on Reddit where a Brazilian state government org is testing out Ubuntu at scale.
Just wanted to say your English is wonderful.
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.
I would probably do debian 12 with kde, xorg, ext4. Not familiar with debian edu though.
I would go with Xfce4 in this case as it is much simpler in terms of UI and complexity
I’d lean towards Xfce as well, but for other reasons; school computers aren’t typically the most beefy machines, so a lightweight desktop environment is probably preferable
Gnome will run on anything made in the last 10 years. Computers won’t last that long in a school environment.
Xfce4 is lighter but it isn’t that big of difference. Xfce4 might also have less of a learning curve.
The reason I suggested xfce4 is that it works well with Debian releases.
My experience with Gnome vs Xfce has been Gnome being sluggish; there’s a difference between running and running well/quickly
Ubuntu LTS with gnome or linux mint. Most available documentation, easy to use, hackable if needed. Make sure it doesn’t crash on the kids!
