I hope I put this in the proper forum. Anyway, I work for a local university as a recruiter of sorts. The Computer Science department pays me to go around local secondary schools and talk to students about studying computer science at the university. The thing is, we use Linux/Unix quite often. I plan on passing out some disks in the classrooms, but I'm not sure which distro. I looking for something that is a live cd, but can also be installed (Mepis, Ubuntu, etc). I was looking into the "ShipIt" program that Ubuntu has, but don't know if I should order Ubuntu or Kubuntu. I have used them both, and see no major differences in performance. I welcome any suggestions anyone has.

Ubuntu is definitely your choice. As far as whether to get Ubuntu or Kubuntu: well, it's simply Gnome vs. KDE. That is the only difference. I currently use Kubuntu and it works quite well.

I'm currently leaning towards Ubuntu. Most of the computers at the university run Fedora, so I think it would be better to get them used to Gnome.

I would certainly second Ubuntu. It seems that all of the 'introduction to Linux' type events that I've seen recently have been passing out Ubunutu.

As you're a recruiter of sorts, you should perhaps look into customizing your own Knoppix remaster which features your university's logo as a wallpaper background, or something like that. On Knoppix's web site, there are links to various Knoppix variants and how to remaster your own customized version of Knoppix.

There's an installer for installing to the hard drive, although this requires typing the command in. That has to do with the "LiveCD first" philosophy of Knoppix, I guess. If you remaster your own Knoppix variant, you can create an icon and/or menu entry for the hard drive installer.

Also do notice that, since its for students, Ubuntu does have an 'Edubuntu' version targetted at educational use.

I was always under the impression that Edubuntu was geared toward a much younger audience. Remastering Knoppix sounds interesting. I might give that a try. Are there any other distros that can be "remastered". Slax comes to mind, but I cannot think of any others.

Possibly. I've never tried it, just heard about it. Just thought I'd throw it out there.

You can create a derivative distribution from just about any distro.

To help us narrow things down, are you looking for more of an installed distro or a LiveCD?

I'm looking for more of a live cd really(80% Live/20% Install). I just want to expose them to Linux without making them commit to a distro. I've used LFS before, but that was a bit labor intensive.

Ouch, yeah, LFS would be brutal.

Knoppix may be good, or the Ubuntu LiveCDs. For a more lightweight distro, I also like Puppy Linux.

Zenwalk and/or Zenlive!

Ubuntu isnt a 'proper' Linux

How about the Kororaa LiveCD? With the XGL "eye-candy" it come with, it might make more of an impression. My kids are 13 and they thought it was "really cool, can I put that on my computer?" The 10th grader across the street was quite impressed as well.

Most of the computers at the university run Fedora
Maybe not what you're looking for but looking around a bit there actually seems to be a FC5 Live CD and there's a project called Kadischi to make an FCn Live CD.


@Darkscot: Ubuntu isnt a 'proper' Linux
It's best to either give solid reasons why or lay off the reverse advocacy thing. This kind of oneliners can get you grilled, burnt and eaten alive, bbq sauce or not. (And you don't have to quote whole posts BTW).

Well I thought it was accepted that Ubuntu isn't a 'proper' Linux and no explanation was necessary?
Fair enough, that was lazy of me!

Check out MEPIS and have a peek at www.distrowatch.com to find LOTS of info on LOTS of DISTRO's.

Mepis is VERY easy and yet VERY powerful. Live and Install on a single CD.