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 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