Jacob

+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.

Another option on Android is NewPipe. Doesn’t look as nice as Libretube imo, but it goes to Youtube directly for content which is useful since public piped instances can be a bit unreliable or slow from time to time. (Also on Libretube you have to sign up and re-import your subscriptions whenever you switch instances which can be tedious)

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.