1d ago

I swapped the entire school computers to linux mint

I go to a programming school, where there were computers running ancient windows 8 and some were on windows 10, they ran really slow and were completely unrelaible when doing the tasks that are required, those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em, so long story short I decided to talk to the principal about it explaining why linux is so much better than windows and gave him reasons why linux will be better for us for education and he agreed after considering it for a bit, he let me know that some students play roblox or minecraft in middle of the lesson and he asks if linux would stop em from doing that, I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons. he gave me the green light to do it, so I spent like 3 days migrating like 20+ computers to linux (since I had to set them up and install some required applications for them) in the last day where I was doing a last check up on the PCs to make sure they are in working order, there was a computer having a problem of which where it didnt boot, I let the principal know about this to get permission to work on it, he said yes, so after some troubleshooting I realized the boot order was all screwed, so since Ive worked with arch before I knew how to fix it, I booted up linux mint live image, chrooted, and fixed the boot order and computer went back to life, prinicipal came in checked on everything to make sure everything works, told me to wait for a bit, and then came back and paid me for his troubles (was a bit of a surprised since I expected nothing of the sort), the next day I came to school, sat down, turned PC on, noticed something was in the trash bin, opened it, found "robloxinstall.exe" on it, told the principal about it, he was pleased with it, so now 2 weeks later he seems now to be confident about linux, as he told me there is another class he is considering to move to linux.

so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

(considering now, that I got a win win situation, I get to use an OS that I like in school, students gets to focus on the lessons instead of slacking.)

299 comments

I love Linux. I'm running Linux and love the experience.
But...
~~i7-4970~~ i7-4790 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em
What in the world are you talking about, man??
Even ignoring the silliness of the "bloat" - i7-4790 eats Win10 alive and asks for seconds.
I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons
So... No, you didn't stop them from doing that. All it takes for them to get back to playing games is to google "linux roblox how to" and 20 minutes later they're good to go. Windows has AppLocker, and GPO to prevent running unwanted software - have you researched alternatives for Linux?
does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
Well, depends on scale. The setup you did is fine for, what, a single classroom? Two classrooms? It's completely unusable for a larger school - for that you need an MDM solution, ideally with some form of IAM. In the Windows world that's SCCM/Intune with AD/EID (local/cloud). Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's only bare-bones equivalents in the Linux world for that, which would be the bigger a problem the larger a school you'd be dealing with.

Well done! Protip: You can use double new lines to format paragraphs. And full-stops.

Nicely done! That’s pretty awesome :)
Though I should point out that it’s also not hard to lock down a windows install a bit more if you don’t make the default account an admin one. But moving to Linux is better imo for a whole host of reasons.

You just taught the next generation about compatibility layers! Well done my man

Would Edubuntu be a better fit?
- we agreed on mint, so I had to put that in since I was trying to get the principal to not use "windows is more familiar" excuse

so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
No, not for elementary/HS. You have to understand that schools aren't regular users. They will have 2 top priorities:
Hardware vender support. There isn't any vendor that can/does support the volume and pricing that a school will do. While some major vendors are starting to offer Linux pre-installed, they aren't apart of their educational vendor options.
They need to have a "drag and drop" security suite. Schools don't have large/well skilled IT department, so they rely on security suites that "tick off all the boxes". This allows them an excuse is suddenly little Timmy has porn on their school computers. (This is one of those reasons ChromeOS is becoming so popular. They can issue a device, have the student only have a Google Workspace for Education account, and then walk away. Easy and simple. And yes, there are many websites that can tell you how to get around it, but then the school gets to turn around and claim the student "hacked" it and is in violation of rules X, Y, and Z to which the parent can also be held responsible.)
Until these two issues are solved, Linux won't be ready for the public education sector. (When the parent issues the device, all rules are gone since it's up to the parent what limits to place, and all the school will say is that the device must be able to run programs X, Y, and Z.)
- Linux is kind of sort is already in elementary and high school use. Schools in my state are often issuing Chromebooks to students for use. They are cheap, easy to manage and get support for, and can do the things students need to do. And the only ones really using all those old Macs that infest schools are the teachers. Though in my local school, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades are using iPads but switch to Chromebooks in 5th grade.
  One can complain about google being evil all you want, but they do offer all the free tools schools and teachers and students need for their lessons.And if COVID taught schools anything it was that we could teach classes online if necessary-- no more snow days.
- maybe only ready for programming education sector then...

And if they learn about wine and lutris and manage to install Roblox, they'll probably get more out of it than by listening to the class in the first place !
I learned so much by circumventing the school security stuff. I probably wouldn't be in IT if not for the parental control limitations and school network blocks
- Back in the DOS and Windows 3.1 days, they tried to lock it down with whatever software they had. We found a way around it. Even the DOS based menu system, we managed to copy the menu software out with its configuration file. Then we experimented with the “encrypted” password in the configuration file and found out that if we removed it, the system would allow you to do anything but that also meant we could create our own password and look at the “encrypted” password. We quickly found out that it was just shifting the ASCII table. We then “decrypted” the school password. Such 12 your old hackers 😆
- yes exactly, its a win win all around

For such a setup I think it Is a good idea to look in to freeipa/idm. Would make management a load more easy. centralized account control and being able to sit at any PC and login with your own credentials is one of the many benefits.

Hey OP, regarding Minecraft: It's a Java program that uses OpenGL for rendering. Therefore it's not a Windows game, but inherently cross platform. Here's the official .deb package https://launcher.mojang.com/download/Minecraft.deb
- oh dang, that changes everything
  
  Well for a .deb, the users would need sudo access.

Are you now the IT support guy for these workstations, or is the school's IT going to take over maintenance. I guess you have an internship or something if you are.
- the school’s IT
  I wonder if that even exists. A mix of Windows 8 (EoL) and 10 (almost EoL) running on Haswells with students freely installing Roblox... all gives an unmaintained vibe.
  
  And this is supposed to be a tech school....
- They probably are, At the UTP in Panama they will contact some students (based on what idk presumably on impressions of performance) to do IT for them, it's not technically an internship it's a regular job that's part time
- not yet, might ask if I could be

Did the same some years ago. It was for the gap between win7 and 10.
Everyone told me it was the best productive time. Because users can't install stuff and my network blocked a lot of dumb shit.
But now we got new win 11 PCs and every user is back on solitaire or shady websites.

When I studied in university - all our computer classes were running Linux, and it was many years ago! Linux proved its effectiveness. When we had russian cyber attack on our banks (virus Petya)- our bank system survived thanks to Linux). Nowadays when twitter, facebook chose nazism - there is only one option to go to decentralized media
- based, also I agree decentralized media is the best
  its the based form of the internet
  
  I like the idea of free speech and we see that tech giants chose dark side of the world. They are not only spying on people but also manipulating their minds.... many still do not realize that they are living in matrix...

When I was in high school, computers had Deep Freeze setup, because kids would constantly break the OS and download malware. It's a software that resets the C drive to a known state on every reboot. You might consider using something similar on classroom workstations.
Also, it might be worth learning about network booting, automating the Linux installer and ansible to install things on every machine at once and automate configuration work.
- Yeah, that was also what was used in my school.
  The only problem was, it was rarely updated so all the applications were always very outdated. And it was still possible to play Minecraft without any administrator privileges.
  
  Same in my case. But we were also learning c++ using Turbo C++ (the msdos one with the blue UI) in the 2010. Everything about high school was 15-20 years out of date. The OS (windows xp) was probably the newest thing on those computers.
- my school also had windows with deep freeze before they malfunctioned or smth iirc from what principal told me

Used to run a whole small highschool on Linux Mint, worked pretty well.
- based

Little side note
those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task
The i7-4790K is still quite powerful, so I'm pretty sure this wasn't the problem, at all. Perhaps they're running on an HDD, have little RAM, or you got the CPU wrong.
You can see the CPU and RAM by launching System Info from tbf start menu, and see if it's running on an SSD or HDD by launching Disks from the menu.
- we dont have the K, just the regular, eitherway these were fastest computers (lenovo thinkcenter) we have, but there weren't many of em, most were with the i5 (HP Elitedesk G1)
  
  we dont have the K, just the regular
  Ah, my bad (^^;
  I ran an i7-4790K in my gaming PC for a long time, as far as games go this 10-year old CPU still hold up well, never had to upgrade it surprisingly enough!
  Still, a 4 GHz quad-core with hyper-threading, and about 8 GiB of RAM, is more than enough to run Windows 10.
  Assuming these are for studying, the heavier workloads would consist of MS Word, Powerpoint and an instructional video in the webbrowser, no?
  What required tasks were too heavy for these computers under Windows 8/10?
  And do they run off SSDs, or spinning HDDs?
- Or they could just have been infected. Especially the ones on Windows 8, which has been EoL for over a year.

Bill Gates is responsible for Common Core which has enshitified the education systems of many states. Anything the schools do to stop giving money to Microsoft is a good move.
- agreed!

That’s pretty cool !
If I had to do this myself, I would probably choose NixOS, so that I could write up a config on one of the PCs, and the deploy the exact same thing on every single one and be certain the build is perfectly reproduced.
Though I’m sure there are similar tools for other distros, but that’s what I know.
- I considered it but prinicipal said no its "too hard" for them, maybe next time

That's an awesome story. If all your doing is browsing the Web or using applications that can easily and stably run on linux or have drop in replacements then linux would definitely be totally viable. On the other hand if you need to install specific proprietary applications and you have to rely on wine then maybe not.
- luckily its just VSCode, so I didnt have to install something thats too hard!

Roblox in the trash AHAHAHAHA
Beautiful effort!!
- yeah! was funny to me too!

Sober (flatpak) should work for Roblox :) it uses the Android version with some fixes, signing in was a little jank when I tried it but after that flawless!
- oh I see, well I'll see what happens in like a month
- Sober is pretty decent nowadays. I had it installed for my daughter last week and she's been playing roblox with no issues besides my old machine ram limitations.

Now students got addicted to linux ricing instead of games, jk good job op and the principal is nice for letting you do that.
- thanks!

It takes one technology inclined person to set it up, it's just takes another one to find a workaround, now the success of Linux in preventing gamers from doing their think depends on whether the second person decides to make the workaround known
- yes but they will have to learn the OS, thats also a good thing
  
  yeah i also think that if people get their things to run, they probably learned something in the process

Focus on lessons instead of slacking, eh?
txt

workstation013 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
- yes (they need to be in the wheel group)

Linux Mint is probably the perfect educational OS to switch to like that. I’m assuming most people are coming from Windows, are mouse+gui only, and are not used to being their own admin and installing all the basics like Firefox and libreoffice.
But it’s still Linux, so the user friendliness doesn’t mean you are locked out from going on tech or customization deep dives. Daily terminal user here, still love me some mint.
- exactly! that's why I picked it xd
- I'm a noon to Linux but I still love using terminal to download apps and stuff because it just looks cool. ASCII makes me feel like I know my way around computers but I'm just installing Firefox lol

Why did you pick Mint?
- Mint's a great choice for beginners, especially for those used to windows
  
  this, people who are afraid of new things won't pick something thats too different to windows
  
  I allways wonder why its mint and not kde, which seems more mature and even more like windows.

But if you left tomorrow would they be able to admin them?
- good question however principal said he wanna keep linux on them forever, perhaps he will learn it and admin them himself, thats my guess
  
  Maybe write up some basic admin instructions (updating, services start/stop, user management, etc). Hire yourself out as a consultant on call if you leave :D
- They will just wipe these computers
  
  I don't think they will bother. They will end up in a landfill, and the school will buy new Windows computers.

Before I read the text, I was going to ask,
"Umm did they know you were doing it?" It would be funny if you just did it without asking leaving them wondering, "How the hell did this happen?"
- You know it's bad when Shadow IT starts migrating your inventories.
  
  It’s like the elf that helps the shoemaker at night.

Yoo that's wild man doing gods (Richard Stallman) work here man.
Great initiative nonetheless. Compared to 8 this much more secure and for programming it's a great choice too. Bringing more life out of some old PCs, saving a school money, and forcing some kids to get creative in order to play Roblox.
As for is it ready fr this application, programming, it has been for a while. For general, especially web based, applications it absolutely is. Of course, there are quite few things were it's just not but for the most part Linux is a great choice.
- thanks, gotta push GNU/Linux a bit higher in marketshare huh xd

Lol a kid can google how to install games on linux, just need one to do it and teach the others, I used to bring games on a usb to play on macs through wine through the school lan, eventually I put them in some random folder on the school network, it didnt delete it til like the last day of school my senior year, wed copy the games to our computers and delete them at the end of class.
- Back when I was in high school I remember hearing about other students that would store games on certain teachers shared folders on the network. I can't remember if the school ever caught on to that.
- But then the accidentally had to learn Linux, win win
- You overestimate the technical competence and attention span of the current generation of kids - they barely know how to use a mouse.
  IMO if any kid these days manages to do enough work to figure out how to do anything on Linux, they're probably well ahead of the pack and deserve to play their game as a reward 😅
  
  One of them will, and the others will ape it.
  Repeat this process enough times and more and more of them will get a bit better.
  It's sort of like education; except the students are a bit better motivated.
  
  this tbh, thank you for saying what I had in mind lol

You have done a remarkable job already.
Linux is a free and open operating system. The licence for it - GNU Public License v2 is designed to grant you and me and my wife and your family and everyone everywhere rights and not restrict our rights. The only restriction with the GPL is that if you make a change to the code, that you make it available to everyone.
Education should be about teaching concepts and ideas and ideals. I think it should not involve artificial costs that might constrain access to a full and fruitful education. Those costs might even involve ... thou shalt update to Windows 11 and your laptop's CPU is not good enough.
Please keep on doing what you are doing, in your way. When you have your school running as you think it should, there is a good chance that you will be asked to do the same thing for other schools.
Please make sure you have the full support of your school principal (I think that is the right term - I'm from Britain so we might have different names for jobs)
I run a small IT company in the UK and I am trying to put together a distribution and so on for my company. Perhaps I should try your approach and be a bit more direct.
Cheers mate Jon
- thank you for your very well thought out comment, and I do know about the GPL, I use it myself in my projects (AGPL for my neocities website and GPL3.0 for some of my other projects), the GPL is a very good license to your most important projects and I never skip it, I only use like BSD/MIT/CC0 for stuff that I dont really care that much about, also I love Britain its a wonderful country, cheers! also good luck!

Next step is to teach the students WINE. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
- Give them easy access to .exe games??? They should have to put in the effort to slack off during class.
- I'll let them figure that out themselves xddd
- The pictures OP posted suggest the distro is Mint. At the last time I installed it, I remember double clicking a exe file brings up a dialogue which asks if I want to run it through WINE.

Linux over here being all environmental and shit.
- real lmao

Btw I would recommend leaving a note on the desktop saying something like COMPUTER_SPECS.TXT. I had Linux on my computers in school, and I was thinking "holy crap Linux is slow and old", but it turned out to be cheap hardware (and I didn't know better, back then)

Just a funny story, but, I use an Ubuntu laptop as my work computer as a teacher, and once, while I was helping another student with work, a student opened my laptop and began trying to install Roblox. She got far enough to figure out it wouldn't work, and started searching for how to install it. When I came over she was trying to figure out how to set up Wine. She got pretty close to getting it working before I came over. I was secretly pretty impressed with how fast she figured it out. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes.
- Gives me hope, I'm glad the kids are still curious and willing to learn. I've seen too many early-20s people at work who have absolutely zero computer skills.
- that's actually an interesting story, makes you wonder if kids nowadys do get exposed to linux first and not windows, would actually learn it faster than having to unlearn windows first?
  
  Or they're so used to smartphone that windows and Linux are equally alien to them
- I wouldn't even be mad honestly. I learned a ton of my early computer skills trying to get stuff running where I shouldn't or get into things I had no business messing with. That's how kids learn!

you're lucky to have an open-minded principle
- Principal*
  Not being pedantic, just thought I'd let you and others know there are multiple ways to spell this word.
  
  I will be pedantic. There is only one way to spell each word; principal and principle are different words (though they share a root).
- They're often having to juggle with very low budgets, old equipment, low skill and zero support. And that's before you add children...
  I don't doubt they jumped at the chance of someone helping out.
- true, normally people would be too afraid

Woohoo, some hacker kid is about to install Sober and Prism and will be the hero for everyone.
My kid's elementary school has a computer club handling all the PCs. The other day they were surprised to hear that the PCs they were playing GCompris, Ktuberling, Pingus, Super Tux, Tuxpaint and Tux Kart on are running Linux.
- For what it's worth, the school computers in my school weren't running Linux and they had Tuxpaint installed. Even proprietary OS users benefit from FOSS.
- I think most kids these days like to play bedrock edition, so it will be harder anyways.
- another example of: one of the best ways to teach children is to trick them.
  try to force them to use linux and the terminal? booooring, hell no….
  give them linux computers without games?
  they’re 1337 haxors in two weeks… with skills that will help them for life….
  especially if they ever get locked in a building with velociraptors….
  
  that's how I learned firewalls and networking lmao
  couldn't access my games, so I found ways around the firewalls and network blocks, just to play on coolmathgames lmao
  
  Or they'll install portable versions of Minecraft so many times they'll decide to learn how to remove -rubbishfiles from root
  
  This is how (at least elder) millennials learned everything they know about technology. It's the only way imo
  
  Hmm I was clearly too well behaved. Most of my knowledge of computers came through wanting to program them to do cool stuff, not bypass restrictions. The cheatiest thing I can remember doing is copying a cool puzzle game from the school computer onto a flash drive so I could play it at home, so I guess I did it backwards?
- That's one of the great things about switching to Linux .... it forces you to learn something new and for kids that is a very good thing.
  All those kids in the school that OP described were getting stagnant in a settled environment of living in Windows ... now that they have Linux in front of them, they will go on to learn how to subvert the system under Linux. It's not a bad thing in my opinion, it will create a whole crop of kids who now know how to fool around with Windows AND Linux.
  I wish someone would have introduced me to Linux when I was kid.
  
  yeah, that's hopefully what I hope to happen, perhaps raising a generation of kids on linux will help linux to grow in marketshare!

There is way to do this that works with even older computers and is easy to manage.
That’s with Edubuntu and thin-client computing using the Linux Terminal Server project, LTSP.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EdubuntuDocumentation/EdubuntuCookbook/Chapter_5_-_Thin-Client_Computing
In that model, you install Linux once on a server. Each computer in the lab is set to boot over the network from the server.
This way there is one computer to maintain, the users can’t access root and all the storage is centralized.
Even old computers with low CPU and RAM and no hard drive can make good thin clients.
A number of schools have been using this approach for 15+ years.
https://www.edubuntu.org/
- 15+.... I was there, Gandalf.... We had these kinds of setups 25+ years ago. How time flies.
  Before that, it was often XTerm style systems. The local machine only booted an XServer and then connected to a central UNIX system. All programs ran on the UNIX server, and were rendered on the XTerm/XServer you were sitting at.
  The original XServer systems were efficient enough to run over serial lines, not just Ethernet.
  Another setup was to put multiple monitors/keyboards/mice on a single UNIX/Linux tower and have it launch multiple XServer sessions so you could have a single computer with up to six people sitting at it.
  I also managed a Rembo lab for a bit. It used a PXE shim OS to get a menu from the Rembo server. From there, you could boot the main OS, or download a new hard drive image from the server. I would build new drive images and upload them to the server, then updating the lab would mean rebooting the computers and clicking a "grab latest" button. It actually worked very well for distributing OSes. We had both Linux and Windows images students could pull down.
  Lab management at scale is a continual struggle to keep everything functional and patched.
  
  now i'm sad that this is (afaik) impossible in the future with everything switching to wayland
- I didnt know this actually! thanks!

Nice work, you did a good thing 😊
- thank you!

Linux was always ready for the education sector. I think already for 10 years now.
- It was ready since day one. Linus wrote Linux while a student at the University of Helsinki. It was inspired by MINIX, which was also targeted for use in schools.
- fair enough, I just hope at some point schools and organizations switches to the cool penguin.
  
  Back in my days I was also disappointed that schools weren't using Linux. So I totally agree with you.
- When I heard about schools using Chromebooks literally the first thing I said was "Linux can do more than a Chromebook can and is free, why the hell aren't they using that?!" Linux running on the cheapest OEM laptop (make sure you get ones without the prepaid Windows license so you don't spend more than you need to) is a better experience than the most expensive Chromebook.
  
  The user experience is not as important as the management tooling.
- My highschool used Ubuntu exclusively back in 2010

Cool but why do you ask the teachers? Without asking anyone would be way more funny and more interesting to see what happens
It’s the sort of school gags that people reminisce 20 years later when they sit with their family near cozy fireplace with a pipe of tobacco or crochet
You need to score all the silly memories while you still can.
People, remember the most important when you are young is to have fun. The responsibility and adulting will come for you anyway. You don’t want to be ‚mature for your age’. Have a heckin blast and take no prisoners
If I could go back in time I would spread custom furry uwumaxxed ransomware that would unlock with trollish gimmick through the school network. But when I got this good with computers I was already at uni so such things lost their luster.
Nowadays I would rather work in security and pentesting and get substantial amount of the adult green paper risk free. We get so boring with age don’t we. There’s nothing more boring than being a good, law obeying citizen but it is what it is if you have half a brain. You can always buy some expensive drugs or become motorsport adrenaline junkie

I love it. Way to go!
- thanks a lot!

.. And this is how you land in IT work
- I'll be definitely cool if I somehow land such job lol
  
  It will all be Chromebooks and software as a service by then. Unless you work as a SaaS vendor, then it will be automatically orchestrating docker containers.
  
  That's definitely something that goes into your resume and should be mentioned in interviews if you ever pursue that line of work.
  
  You will regret it in 500 years though.

lol I thought this was a guerrilla IT warfare post where you snuck in and did it, but you actually did it with permission.... 😂
- yeah, I don't want trouble xD
- Could you imagine the stories that would circulate in the playgrounds? "I heard the Linux fairy is close. Timmy can't play Roblox in class anymore."

Linux is so good today. Windows is increasingly shooting itself in the foot and MacOS requires a huge premium (and also billionaires suck) which is increasingly incompatible with budget conscious sectors like education. Really great stuff if you're managing to get people to love it there.
- a lot definitely started to open up to it I think, I overheard 2 students wanted to try it on their laptops, so my move definitely did smth

Great job! Now it's a good time to learn a bit of Ansible so you can keep your fleet up-to-date and configured. It would also come in handy in case you get a permit to do more conversions in the future.
- I'll look into it, thanks a bunch!
- +1 for Ansible
  Install an application
  Do all the updates at the same time ( - after automating all the backups of course 😉)
  Removing games 😈
  
  My son fell into a bad group of mostly straight A kids in middle school.
  They collected a large collection of webpage based games. They started out attempting to host them on the schools network through shared docs etc. The IT guys wised up to them and shut it down.
  Then they turned into 14 year olds and took it up a notch.
  Got together and paid for a hosting location overseas. Built a video hosting webpage with thousands of pirated educational videos. Made a secondary menu without any links on the homepage. They have to type in the index page in the URL. All of the games pages show up as educational videos in the history.
  Most of the teachers in the school are using the free educational videos so the webpage is on the trusted site on the school districts content filter.
  The IT teacher at highschool figured it out. Instead of ratting them out and banning the webpage. He started working on getting them scholarships to colleges. Now most of the ringleaders have full ride scholarships.
  My son was invited in because he is extremely good at games (unusually fast reaction times). He holds the high score on most of the games. I don't play against the little shit. It's pointless to try to beat him.

this is actually so insanely epic, good job!
pretty cool of the principal too to allow you to do stuff like this
- Seconding the last part. When I was in high school, the admins wouldn’t approve most after school clubs, or students displaying their artwork. Here this admin is encouraging their students’ curiosity and talents, while letting the students have real impact in their school. Grade A stuff right there.
- ikr, didn't expect him to agree

This is a great story, and you should be really proud of yourself! Good job :). I used Linux through college and had very few issues (that I can remember!)
- I used Linux in university also, and actually had LESS problems than my classmates - a few of our textbooks came with "homework" versions of industry software (made by the textbook writer, just coded to be good enough to learn some basic concepts and work with some provided example files) and for reasons unknown to man and beast, most of them worked better on wine than on Windows natively - for one, the "submit" button was basically off-screen on Windows but placed where you'd expect on wine, on another trying to connect to machines was a HUGE pain.... Except the Linux networking interface had no issues haha.
  I only switched because the forced upgrade to Windows 8 ate my first year midterm essays and I never forgave it.
- thanks, mind telling me what were those issues? I'm kinda curious, perhaps I should have a mental note for those if they are related to what I just did
  
  It's been too long, but seems like I had some problems with formatting getting wrecked between Word and LibreOffice. It probably works a lot better now, not to mention that you can just access Word in the browser if really necessary.

Holy shit if there’s that much dust on the front grille of the computer I can’t even imagine how much is caked on the internal heat sinks. I bet you could literally double the speed of these computers with a vacuum or air blower.
- probably but I wasn't allowed to open them (Its too much work for 20+ computers) but atm they got double the speed compared to before with windows
  
  They really need to clean the computers out or they may eventually cook themselves and then nothing will run on them.

I don’t know how developed your school system is but, I would advise the principal into blocking the websites via DNS that way the computers won’t resolve them.
AdGuard, PiHole, OpenSense are free open source DNS resolvers however, chances are your school already manages its own DNS so I would obviously consult with them first.
- Idk tbh, but the principal seems experienced I think, he might figure it out

Cool story bro.
Except the story is actually cool, and you're a real bro!
- thanks man, you're a real bro too!

And IMO if one of those students can get Roblox working on Linux, they have solved a harder problem than any homework they would be given 😆.
I'm curious how ootb mint works out for this usecase. Any chance we could get a 6mo update later? I'm particularly curious how well it holds up against non-admin users who may constantly be trying to get root-level access. There's almost certainly going to be one student who figures out a local privilege escalation.
- Sure! I might even make a follow up to explain the whole thing in detail, however I fear it may be too long for one post, should I perhaps make an entry in a neocities website I just finished making? I could probably make it like a diary with detailed entries and stuff, idk if yall up for it, otherwise I'll just post it here in parts.
  
  but right now, I'm tired, so I'll probably write it tomorrow.

Next month: The principal complains that the students play SuperTuxKart now. :)
- lmaooooo, well they have to touch the terminal or figured out that there is a software store first.....and know the sudo password kek
  
  What about flatpak tho? https://flathub.org/apps/net.supertuxkart.SuperTuxKart

Does your school have an it department? If not maybe that can be a job for you. Someone will need to maintain that fleet.
- Beats me. maybe they do, maybe they don't? I honestly have no clue, perhaps I should ask.
  
  YES on the ask!!! Seconded big time

That’s super awesome
Buuuut my guest gaming machine is a 4670k machine and I can confirm that not only does Windows 10 run very smoothly on it, but it also runs most modern games at 60+FPS! CPU-bound games can struggle. We finally got my partner a new computer and made that one the guest machine when Persona 5 went from 80FPS down to 5FPS when they got off the train hahaha
- oh haha I see, I've been using linux for 5 years so far and I have been ONLY gaming on linux, I have ditched windows for good, this switch was very easy to me cuz I dont have any windows specfic apps/games dependency, everything I want is there, and the ones that aren't, there are alternatives that are the same or better than the apps I've used on windows!
  
  Ugh I would love to switch solely to Linux but I have ONE GAME that I play online with friends that’s an incredibly ridiculous install process and it is impossible to run on Linux without issues. It’s amazing that it even runs on Windows nowadays. (The Specialists, a mod for the original Half Life.)
  
  Oh and I should specify my old guest machine does have 16GB of RAM, solid state drives, and an RTX2070, so it’s probably a bit better equipped than school machines hahaha

This is great! The science teacher who used to also look after all the computers at my school was a big fan of the Acorn Archimedes/RISC PC (quite standard school computers in my day due to the BBC computer literacy stuff, where Acorn won the contract for the BBC Micro). We had a couple of PCs (RM Nimbus) which didn't get as much use. I believe the plan was to switch over to PCs running Windows (95 had been out a couple of years) and because of that he left. I wonder if there was a viable alternative at that point, such as Linux, that he would have stayed.
- windows 95 and RICS PCs....this makes me feel nostalgic....
  
  I am old.

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