Linux Mint Education

[Dimitrysaf]

This discussion proposes the development of a specialized Linux Mint deployment infrastructure tailored for educational environments. The objective is to provide a fast to boot, friendly to manage platform for managing student workstations, addressing the limitations of existing solutions and leveraging established technologies.
Current educational deployments often suffer from significant maintenance overhead [see more]. Manual configuration and updates across numerous workstations are more needed than it should. Furthermore, outdated systems, because these programs could not update, and in context incompatible, pose security risks, leading to potential vulnerabilities.
The abandonment of the Greek Ministry of Education's project, which utilized LTSP, NFS, and iPXE for thin client deployments, highlights the need for a sustainable and maintainable solution. This project, while providing valuable tools such as those for user management and Epoptes integration, lacked continued support. Epoptes, an open-source computer lab management and monitoring tool, provides functionalities for screen sharing, remote execution, and student activity monitoring. Its integration into a comprehensive educational deployment is crucial.

We propose the development of a Linux Mint-based deployment infrastructure that combines some of these components. Firstly, the implementation of iPXE for network booting of thin clients over IPv4 and IPv6, and the configuration of LTSP and NFS for providing a centralized operating system image are essential for a robust network boot infrastructure. Secondly, development or integration of scripting tools (e.g., sch-scripts) for automating sysadmin actions. Thirdly, seamless integration of Epoptes for teacher-led classroom management, including screen sharing, remote control, and student activity monitoring, with configuration of security policies to restrict student access to system administration functions, are needed for classroom management. My focus is an install and play friendly set up, to migrate laboratory schools seamless.

Moreover, pre-configured system settings optimized for educational use, including restricted access to system administration tools, default installation of ad-blocking software, customized LightDM theme with school wallpapers, if you want to be a DIVA, specific settings like: if the windows snap up, it should make it full screen and not cover the half of the screen. Disabling unnecessary animations and effects, for performance in lower end PCs. And keyboard layout shortcut from Super + Space to Shift + Alt, are necessary for system optimization. Linux Mint package manager is also crucial in managing updates for the lab, in case there is an incompatibility the incompatible ones will not be selected for update. Finally, implementation of security best practices, including LTS Kernel, Firewall, etc, are necessary for security hardening.

Here's a video example of use of these tools. Which I have made them to work in Linux Mint with some patches....
Screencast_20250309_131650.webm

[InfoLibre]

Did you already test : PrimTux, SambaÉdu and Debian Edu?

[Dimitrysaf]

Did you already test : PrimTux, SambaÉdu and Debian Edu?

Thank you for your ideas. These distros are kind of old-looking. Not like Linux Mint. The projects I said, LTSP, Epoptes and sch-scripts are now continuing support, but limitations. They will still only support Ubuntu MATE 24.04 now... Sadly there is nothing I can do since it's a Government thing. But still, I imagine an iso from Linux Mint that includes LTSP, Epoptes, sch-scripts and default configurations (for all users) ready to go.