I have an older Windows 11 laptop that isn’t working too well with Windows anymore. I want to wipe it and install Linux on it. I’m a high school science teacher. I’d primarily use the computer to run web based science simulations. It will be connected to a LCD projector. Essentially to run Stellarium ( https://stellarium-web.org/ - an astronomy website) and phet simulations (https://phet.colorado.edu/). A bonus would to be able to control the laptop remotely with an iPhone or iPad so I could run simulations while circulating around my classroom
Is ed Ubuntu a good Linus flavour to use for this purpose? Is it fairly easy to install and maintain?
You have access to Chrome or its open source derivatives, such as the base Chromium, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
The only thing I would say, if you are bringing it into the classroom and putting it on the school Wi-Fi - especially if it is faculty Wi-Fi - is that you double check the IT policy for the school, that you are allowed to use unmanaged devices on the network; most places ban the use of non-sanctioned devices and that can lead to disciplinary action.
So, technically, you should have no problems, but double check the IT policy, before attaching it to the school network.
I’ve never really understood the point of Edubuntu, I’m not sure what it offers on top of base Ubuntu. The educational applications highlighted by the maintainers can surely be installed on any distro.
Ubuntu is a fine choice but lacks modern features that may be important to your use case.
If you’re truly just looking for a platform on which to browse websites, ChromeOS Flex might be a good option, especially if your org is already tied into the Google ecosystem.
The Fedora-based Bluefin OS is a great choice if you need more of a full operating system.
Both Bluefin and ChromeOS feature immutable filesystems, meaning the operating system files cannot be easily modified by the user, so the computer is much more resilient against curious students or malicious software.
Ok. So I’ll install Edubuntu once on one laptop so I can take note of all of the education apps I think are worthwhile. Then I’ll go with Ubuntu or another distribution, knowing what apps I’d like to install. All good.
Is putting a recovery partition on these laptops complicated? So, I could have one or two distros stored on hidden partitions. And I could just tap on F2 or whatever during the boot process to reload an OS? Not dual boot. But being able to perform a complete re install
You might be better off taking a stroll through the app store of whatever OS you choose. If you’re limiting yourself to whatever applications come pre-installed on edubuntu you might be missing out on some really useful software. Here’s a screenshot of the curated education section in the application store included on Bluefin:
I’m not sure if a recovery partition is a thing on Bluefin/ChromeOS. They’re immutable filesystems so such a feature would be redundant - you would be recovering to exactly what you currently have.
For now I’ll be using Clonezilla to upload an Edubuntu image to 20 laptops being donated to my classroom.
The image will include the administratior account as well as one pre-configured student account. Each laptop will automatically login in to the student account after a restart. I’m including a reset script that will delete any configuration and cosmetic changes students make after the laptop is rebooted
Finally, only FireFox will be included in the student profile. The home page will be set to portal.office.com so students can save their projects to their OneDrive accounts as the reset I’m including will wipe out any work saved locally.
The attached picture shows the reset script as suggested to me by Gemini. I’d appreciate it and f anyone in the know could debug the script for me and let me know if they see any issues.
