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.

  • @[email protected]
    9•3 months ago

    I’d use fedora atomic, specifically ublue, because you can fully control what the os is.

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Other questions are redundant.
    4. 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.
    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      3•3 months ago

      I would be careful using Fedora Immutable as it is still fairly untested.

      A stable base and Ansible is probably a safer bet

            • Possibly linuxEnglish
              -1•3 months ago

              Proven that it can run without issues. Proven that if you have an issue, you can fix it.

              Don’t put untested software in prod

              • @[email protected]
                1•3 months ago

                No idea where you get the idea from that it has to be proven and that it’s somewhat unreliable and in beta. I get the impression you talk about something different

                • Possibly linuxEnglish
                  -1•3 months ago

                  You don’t put untested software in prod. You just don’t. It might be fine on your machine but don’t put on systems for others

                  • Para_lyzed
                    3•3 months ago

                    Fedora Silverblue was released alongside Fedora 30, which was 5 years ago; it is not “untested”, in fact it is quite extensively tested by its userbase. It also is not in beta as you claimed previously, its release with Fedora 30 was its full release, after the betas with Fedora 29. Atomic desktops have been around for longer than that, however. They are far more tested and reliable than you seem to be giving them credit for. In fact, they are far more stable and far more resilient because you can simply roll back changes when you boot. A few previous versions of the entire operating system are available to boot from in GRUB, and it’s as simple as booting into a previous version if a new one has issues. It’s actually the perfect use case for a school computer lab, because each install is perfectly consistent, can be managed and fixed easily if anything were to break (if that were the case then the OS would have broken in non-atomic versions anyway), and nothing the user does will affect the base image of the system. The base image doesn’t change unless it is updated. You can overlay things overtop of the base filesystem, but the base filesystem stays the same, so those overlays can be easily reverted.

    • @[email protected]
      1•3 months ago

      I second this recommendation! I’d consider immutably a requirement here. For a little more stability, I’d stay one version behind the current release of Fedora (last 3 are supported at any time). So when 49 comes out, I’d stay on 39 and only update to 40 when 41 releases about 6 months later.