Jacob

It should work normally, there’s even cinnamon applets for controlling it from the panel

Another nice-to-have is KDE Connect, it connects your desktop with your phone to sync notifications, send files, control media playback, use as remote input, share clipboard, send commands, and more

BONUS: here’s some command-line toys that are not useful or necessary, but are just real fun to take a look at especially if you’re new to linux:

• cmatrix (does the matrix code rain thing)
• cowsay (ascii cow with speech bubble)
• sl (steam locomotive in your terminal)
• cbonsai (generate bonsai tree)
• neofetch (this one is actually very useful and will print system information in an aesthetically pleasing way)

Here’s some creative software that replace the functionalities of Adobe software & more.

• photo editing: GIMP
• vector images: Inkscape
• drawing/painting: Krita (GIMP also fine for this)
• video editing: kdenlive
• 3d modelling, animating, etc.: Blender
• audio editing: Tenacity (Audacity fork made after the buyout without telemetry)
• DAW: LMMS
• media player: VLC or mpv

if there’s any other specific software you’re looking for a FOSS alternative to, don’t hesitate to ask. You always have more options on Linux than you’d think.

NixOS has snapshots built in as well but I’ve never had to actually use them to recover anything because Nix packages are built in isolation from one another, and their dependencies are declared, so packages can’t break each other when installing or upgrading them.

NixOS is also an immutable distro, which prevents accidental bad changes to the system. Tumbleweed is very friendly and stable compared to many other distros out there, but it’s still vulnerable to accidental breakage in the same ways most other distros are. I think the cherry on top for the average joe using Nix compared to OpenSUSE, however, is just the fact that the Nixpkgs repository absolutely dwarfs OpenSUSE’s.

Luckily, if you prefer to stick with whatever distro you’re running already, but want the power of the Nix package manager, you can get the best of both worlds and install just Nix (without NixOS) on any distro.

+1 for Nix. In my case I switched from Opensuse Tumbleweed to NixOS about a year ago. Before NixOS I had spent years distro-hopping fairly regularly just in an effort to find something that was atleast moderately simple to setup/troubleshoot, (I’m no developer, and my Linux technical expertise really only covers the basics) and that would be resilient to the careless tinkering I tended to do in general.

Using NixOS on a daily basis has been a complete pleasure. After experiencing the sane-ness of a declarative system I’ll never go back. As of late, NixOS seems to have been growing steadily in popularity, although most of its userbase are experienced developers, businesses, and almost no Linux beginners. This is understandable given its current state and reputation as an advanced distro, but I am of the opinion that–if a GUI software store for nixpkgs and a GUI program for editing the system’s configuration options were developed–NixOS could quickly become one of the most desktop user-friendly distros available given its underlying immutability and unrivalled stability in general.

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.