Which would be the better distro in a school environment?

[Pikachu6708]

Hiya! I've had the idea floating around in my head for a couple days of somehow getting my town's K-12 public school district to at least try FOSS and see how they like it, and I'm leaning more towards Edubuntu for the workstations, but still, which would be the better distro for the workstations in that kind of environment? Edubuntu or Linux Mint?

[xenopeek]

It's a little bit unclear to me what exactly K-12 is (I know K9 ), but from doing an Internet search I guess at least in the USA this is denoting the last year of middle school? Like 18 year olds? I'm not exactly sure how that age group would benefit from Edubuntu. I've always assumed Edubuntu to be aimed at lower age group.

[Pikachu6708]

K-12 = Kindergarten through 12th grade. Pretty much 5 years old to 18 years old as far as age goes. I mean you wouldn't wanna try and teach a kindergartener or 4th-grader Arch or Gentoo, would 'ya?

[jamvaru]

not really sure what edubuntu is, but i'm assuming it has more edu stuff than linux mint does, by default

ubuntu being the most popular distro, it makes sense to use edubuntu over something else, unless you are convinced otherwise

i assume edubuntu has lots of modules and addons, plugins, etc. that make it flexible enough for k-12

i would be more interested in seeing a viable workup of a home-schooling distro, or is that what edubuntu is?

[Pikachu6708]

Edubuntu's Ubuntu that's aimed at the classroom, and you can get the Edubuntu packages on Mint, I'm sure.

[xenopeek]

Edubuntu is using Unity. I'd go with Cinnamon instead, but that is a personal preference. Like you shared, you can install the Edubuntu packages on any Ubuntu based distro easily anyway. If you have to install to multiple computers, you'd probably want to look into Remastersys to clone one installation to all other computers. Or into creating a custom Linux Mint ISO with the Edubuntu packages installed: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/918.

[/dev/urandom]

which would be the better distro for the workstations in that kind of environment? Edubuntu or Linux Mint?

This totally depends on what the school needs. There is no generic answer to this.