Jacob

If you have any additional software which you are looking for FOSS Linux alternatives for, feel free to list them. Your options are much greater than most people coming from Windows expect them to be, and many of us have already spent a lot of time deep down the rabbit hole of finding quality open-source software alternatives, so we can surely point you in the right directions.

NixOS is immutable and highly reproducible, with the ability to rebuild identical systems with a declarative configuration file–including installed packages.

So in the case of multiple public computers, you would only need to create/maintain one configuration file that defines all of the user profiles, permissions, restrictions, settings, software packages, you name it.

It would without a doubt be what i’d choose for a fleet of public library computers. Extremely reliable and easy to setup to prevent tampering or misuse.

maybe you’ll find this useful or interesting: https://meshtastic.org/

NixOS sounds perfect for your use case.

Of your key features it has:

• A simple GUI installation process
• A very large package repository (the largest, in fact)
• Frequent updates and bleeding edge software through nixos-unstable and nixpkgs-unstable channels
• The ability to try any desktop environment you like by editing one or two lines in your config
• A very supportive and active community

Additionally, if you like to reinstall frequently, NixOS negates the need for maintaining an installing/config script since the singular configuration.nix file that you edit to customize your system will rebuild the exact same system on another computer. For example, I copied my configuration.nix on my PC to my laptop and now they are exactly the same, packages and all.

NixOS may seem a little daunting at first, since it has often been referred to as an “expert” distro with a steep learning curve. Don’t let this fool you though–despite NixOS’ unique advanced capabilities–it is actually quite straightforward and simple to use as a desktop machine. Speaking from personal experience as a perpetual linux noob, it’s really not difficult and the benefits and stability of it far outweigh any small hiccups you might encounter initially.