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.

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 would probably do debian 12 with kde, xorg, ext4. Not familiar with debian edu though.

Linux Mint

There are also distros that are meant specifically for educational settings:

https://itsfoss.com/educational-linux-distros/

Note that I don’t think that Endless OS restricts it’s usage.

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.

Linux Mint

1. I’d say go for a rolling, maybe do updates on weekends
2. 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
3. Doesn’t really matter, company distros might be paid tho, and that can obviously get expensive
4. Wayland if your DE has good support (i.e. is GNOME or Plasma), otherwise X
5. Btrfs’ snapshotting capabilities might be useful to rollback the system to something working if the students fuck something up
6. Immutable without sudo access should be the safest to hand over to people that you don’t want to ruin anything
7. I don’t know enough about specific purpose distros

If you already know Nix, NIxOS would be a good choice

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.

Just wanted to say your English is wonderful.

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).

Opensuse tumbleweed. Its rolling release and gets lots of packages and is pretty stable NASA uses opensuse for there computers. I run tumbleweed on my laptop and btfs is really good and i havent had any issues minus one time i forced powered off while it was updating and it broke zypper. Plus side tho is the live boot can "upgrade an install and fix things like broken package managment. Aswell as opensuse is based off of rhel so package support is really good

@Fint0034 For those who have never used a Linux distro I would recommend first installing a VM to test a distro without damaging the local system. My suggestion is to always start with well-known and friendly distros like Ubuntu or MINT.

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.

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