I applaud your optimism that there are enough people employed in the school IT to do that properly.

Don't get me wrong, you are absolutely right with those statements, but the schools used Chromebooks for a reason I would think, the same reason that if they had not used Chromebooks it would be some Windows installation.

It is what people know, it is "easy" to work with and so on. Those are obviously not great reasons and not 100% true, but that is what counts for those schools.

I am very curious what they are going to replace this with and I am unfortunately 100% sure it is going to be Windows and the Onedrive/Outlook ecosystem.

Having worked with schools that use chromebooks before, generally the entire point of using them is that Google is your IT department. You don’t need any on site servers beyond a router from your isp, and can just return anything that breaks to Google for a replacement, all very cheaply. The records can all be administered by whatever teacher is least scared of computers and can use the nice gui. Especially for smaller schools with say a dozen or so total staff, not needing to pay a employee or MSP to fix the computers is a big deal.

Nextcloud however, as much as I like using it, requires a server. It requires the ability to understand hardware requirements enogh to get a good nas, an ok understanding of dns, and when the gui updater breaks, an ability to ssh in and run the updater manually. You need ssl certs, and if your using letsencrypt port forwarding, and public dns entery, and keeping on top of updates. Jan, fourth grade teacher who plays Stardew Valley and so isn’t too terrified when asked to go into the brightly colored menu, is not going even know it exists, much less install it.

Also, the problem with Fedora is that it also requires an domain, which means installing and configuring dedicated domain controllers, which is not an simple task. You need a deficated IT person, or you go with an MSP, and the MSP will just set up a windows environment in a few hours and be done with it.

Is Nextcloud also for personal use or just corporate? I can't seem to find any kind of pricing on it.

Any suggestions for replacing the admin tools and examination mode on Linux?

chromebook's are incredibly easy to manage from an I.T. perspective, and they are cheap to replace and repair. that's why they are popular

Kind of a captive audience if your school requires it right?

@pineapplelover guess this will just make them sign up to services that don't share data to Google. 🤷

@throws_lemy