I use this now, but I also try to use it on some seriously old Dell laptops at my non-profit. Sadly, that means I must first install Ubuntu, vanilla. This means I then must login to Unity and install Gnome-Flashback.
Normally, this takes about 10 seconds on a modern machine. On these 10 year old Dells? Unity chugs... A task that should take me 5 minutes takes an hour because Unity lags so far behind the mouse and slows every single process on the machine to an absolute crawl.
I cussed out Canonical for this a few years ago when they asked me some survey questions. They wanted to know why Ubuntu was not more popular on the server. My answer was that Unity was such a crock of shit that no one wanted to go near damn thing, even if they were just going to make the machine into a headless server. It's that freakin' bad.
If the HW is the same, you could create a custom NixOS based desktop image based on Fluxbox (or awesome) with just the programs you need (1 browser, skype, mail program, etc.).
Then you can manage updates automatically, probably just security updates.
Normally, this takes about 10 seconds on a modern machine. On these 10 year old Dells? Unity chugs... A task that should take me 5 minutes takes an hour because Unity lags so far behind the mouse and slows every single process on the machine to an absolute crawl.
I cussed out Canonical for this a few years ago when they asked me some survey questions. They wanted to know why Ubuntu was not more popular on the server. My answer was that Unity was such a crock of shit that no one wanted to go near damn thing, even if they were just going to make the machine into a headless server. It's that freakin' bad.