What major linux Graphical interface/Distro do students at biomed science academy prefer?

Introduction

When using an operating system one of the most important factors for ease of use is the GUI. The GUI also known as the Graphical User Interface, is what you actually interact with typically while using your computer. GUIs make up settings, file explorers, and pretty much anything visual going on on your computer. This literature review will go over similar studies to the topic of what Linux GUIs/Distributions are best for students at a Biomed science academy. Throughout this Literature review, the focus will be specifically on Linux distributions. This review would be significant for students or a school computer lab in order for them to pick a distro or GUI best suited for their purposes.

Understanding the difference between Linux and Windows in terms of their GUIs is important before evaluating the alternative GUIs. In Linux distributions, Hasnain and Rafi (2022) say that even though windows provides a standard and uniform interface, Linux distros meanwhile, provide highly customizable GUIs. They argue that while this customizability is powerful it can challenge users with its complexity. The strength of this source is its technical comparison; however, it has a broad scope not exactly covering specifically the high school environment.

Narrowing that focus onto specifically education, Pastorfide (2025) conducted a comparative study of school computer labs. The study found that while the cheap price to implement Linux systems as well as its security is a major point to switch, ultimately the success of the operating system relies on the user friendliness. Both Windows and Linux are good in this area. According to the school laboratory comparative study “or the ease of use, both operating systems(sic) would have the same score in this area. Over the years, both operating systems, focuses on improving their user experience, allowing users to easily cope with using(sic) their environment.”

In order to determine which distribution/GUI is the best, we have to look at them individually breaking down the environments that are available. First off there is Gnome which is the default GUI environment for Ubuntu. Gnome is a more professional desktop environment According to the Ubuntu Linux Bible, “Think of it as a professional desktop environment focusing on stability more than fancy effects.” This shows it is designed with stability in mind rather than looking unique or “cool”. While the Ubuntu Linux Bible is a good source for Gnomes intended design it is mostly a instructional manual than anything else

In contrast to Gnome's more professional modern approach, other distros go for a more traditional approach that is easy to switch to. The cinnamon desktop environment in Linux Mint is often recommended to new users as it looks similar to windows. According to linux mint 22 (translated from german) “For this, you do not need any Linux knowledge at all and can quickly and easily switch from Windows. [...] In order to find your way around quickly, you will receive an introduction to the recommended desktop environments for Linux Mint, [such as] Cinnamon…”. This shows mints ease of use from the perspective of someone switching from windows. There are a lot of limitations with this source, as it's translated from German and it's only a preview of the book.

Studies have observed how students actually interact with these systems James Kiarie from Top Linux Distributions for Students in 2023 states “The UI, in many ways, bears a striking resemblance to Windows XP or Windows 7 and if you are coming from a Windows environment, Linux Mint is an ideal choice.” so if the students are moving in from windows Mint environments would be an ideal choice for them.

Providing more evidence to support mints usability, Hall (2015) used a heat map in order to track how university students interacted with the Gnome interface struggled with things like the activities corner according to The Linux Journal, “many testers experienced difficulty with the GNOME "Activities" hot corner.” This shows that navigating from a windows environment Gnome can be very difficult to work with. This study however was formed in 2015 and while Gnome remains largely similar It has also changed a lot in that time.

In conclusion most of the literature shows that While Linux is highly capable especially in a STEM environment Its adoption heavily relies on the GUI and its actual usability, The studies show that introducing Modern GUIS that are different from windows can become very confusing to new users while cinnamon and XFCE provide a more windows like environment and easing the transition. However there is still lacking research on this specific topic. Future studies should focus more on schools instead of broader more general studies. This would provide more data and answer more definitely whether modern interfaces like Gnome or windows like GUIS are the best for students.

Materials and Methods

Throughout this experiment the “laptop Legion 5 gen 10” (5070 32 gig) was used in order to boot into the various distros. In order to boot into the 3 distros the study was conducted on a “SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 64GB” The students were provided with a printed survey

To determine which major Linux Graphical User interface (GUI) or distribution is most preferred by students a usability study was conducted. The hypothesis of this experiment is that students would prefer linux mint the most out of all of the distros provided. Each student was provided with the same materials One Lenovo legion 5 gen 10 with a 5070 and 32 gigs of RAM, one Sandisk Ultra USB 3.0 64GB USB drive with Ventoy installed, and one printed copy of a PDF document of which the students recorded their answers.

The experiment was set up by placing the laptop in front of the student and booting individually in a live environment from the USB drive. They were given 10 minutes each to interact with the Distro and answer the questions based on the printed PDF document. Following the interaction with specific parts of each distro, the Students recorded their answers onto the Printed document by scaling specific portions on a scale between 1-5 one representing strongly disliking/ very difficult and five being strongly like or very easy. The following were the tasks given to the students for them to complete:

• Initial Navigation and Familiarity: The student will be instructed to open the main application menu and select an application Like a web browser or calculator and rate how intuitive it was for them on a scale of 1-5
• File Management and Organization: Open the file manager, create a file named “Project” , put a blank document inside it and then delete the folder. Then the student will rate it was to manage, organize, and locate files on a scale of 1-5
• Multitasking and Window Management: Open a text editor and a web browser and Snap them side by side (split scream) like you were taking notes while reading an article. Then they will rate it on how seamless it was to organize the windows between 1-5
• System Settings Accessibility: Open settings and navigate to the wifi settings menu and connect it to the biomed Guest WIfI then rate it on how easy it was find the setting change it and connect to the wifi..
• Software Discovery (App Center): Open the built in software discovery software and search for chrome or chromium and download it from the app store and then rate how visually friendly/ visually appealing it was as well as how easy it was to install the app on a scale of 1-5
• Visual Appeal & Aesthetics: Look at the overall design the graphics the Icons the aesthetics and rate it on a scale 1-5
• Overall Impression: Reflect on the brief time spent in the distro and rate on a scale between 1-5 on whether or not you could or would switch

Results

The surveys were conducted with a total of ten (10) completed surveys from a wide variety of students. Through these conducted surveys there were no issues of note preventing a fair and non biased survey of linux distributions.

The setting accessibility task required the Student to connect to the “Biomed Guest” wifi connection in order to test the ease of use in basic computer settings. The data shows ubuntu with a lead in this category with an overall score of 40 mint close behind with 38 and fedora even closer at 37.

The file management task required students to complete basic tasks in the file manager program within the distributions in order to test basic file navigation ability. The data shows Fedora in the lead with an overall score of 45 with Mint close behind at 40. Ubuntu’s score is significantly lower than that of Mint and Fedora with a score of 16.

The multitasking task required users to “Snap” two windows together in order for them to take up equal portions of the screen in order to test multitasking within the given system. The data show Fedora and Mint with the same score of 39 and Ubuntu falling behind with a score of 30

In the Navigation task the students were tasked to open an application from the application launcher in order to test the ease of use in opening an application in the given system. The data shows that Ubuntu was the best in this category with a score of 46 with Mint and Fedora falling extremely closely behind at a score of 45 for the both of them.

The software application task required the students to download an application from the stock app manager in order to test the feasibility of downloading a new application on the computer. The results show Ubuntu and Fedora tied with a score of 36 while Mint fell significantly behind the other two with a total score of 23.

For the visual appeal task the students were tasked with rating the overall visuals of the given distro in order to see which students would find the most visually appealing. The data shows that Fedora has a strong lead with a score of 38 with Ubuntu having a score of 28 followed closely by mint at a score of 27.

For the Overall impression task the students were tasked with rating overall how they felt about the operating system and whether or not they would switch to the given distro as students. The data shows a very strong lead with Fedora at a score of 35 Mint had a score of 22 and was followed closely by Ubuntu with a score of 21

The total graph is the combined scores across every task for the individual systems. This was made in order to more objectively decide which operating system is best for the students at biomed science academy. The data shows Fedora was the overall pick with a score of 275 this was followed by Mint with a score of 234 Ubuntu followed closely with a score of 217.

Discussion and Conclusions

As can be interpreted from this data , Fedora holds a strong lead across most categories with mint and ubuntu being pretty close with an overall difference of only 17. Based on this data it would suggest that fedora would be the best linux distro for students at biomed science academy. A field that Ubuntu struggled was in file management, a score of 16 when compared to the other two scoring around 40. This is likely because the majority of the students could not figure out how to create a document inside a folder in ubuntu. There was no obvious button or submenu to create a file or even a text or document file directly in the file manager. As a result Ubuntu scored really low for file management. Another significant outlier is linux mint in software applications. Students would struggle to find the store and would often open “web apps” instead of the actual store manager. The app that they wanted was the software manager which is not immediately obvious to the average user. Also, in both Fedora and Ubuntu the “software manager” would have a store icon and is pinned to the taskbar directly putting it in direct line of sight. Unfortunately Mint had to be booted into safe mode in order to get the distro working on a live usb which caused scaling issues as the menus became small and hard to see. This might be the cause as to why fedora scores so high on visual aesthetics as they went from an improperly scaled environment to a properly scaled one.

Most users when using Ubuntu's GUI (gnome) was that the users coming from windows with no linux experience struggled using its graphics manager. Instead of the taskbar being laid out horizontally across the bottom of the screen (like in windows) Ubuntu has the taskbar vertically on the left side of the screen with quick settings on the top of the screen. This caused confusion in a lot of students when trying to find applications. WHen attempting to connect to the “Biomed Guest” wifi in Fedora the “KDE wallet” manager would pop up causing confusion among the students who did not know what popped up or why it did so thinking they did something wrong.

Finally, the results seem to follow a trend that the longer someone is exposed to linux environments the more used they will be to the tasks they had completed previously. Distros were tested in order from ubuntu to mint and finally fedora. The ranking also goes in that order with ubuntu being the lowest followed by mint and fedora with the most points. Even with the three distros tested here there are still many different distros with their own GUIS that remain. It was not feasible to test all the distros at once as that would take a tremendous amount of time. The tests performed in these experiments were also very surface level when compared to daily driving these different operating systems and does not fully encapsulate the experience of using it day to day.

As stated previously, the results could be heavily impacted from the students getting used to the tasks they performed as there is a correlation between the order of the distros they used and how high their score is. However even with this there are certain results like the file management scores that show an extreme difference eliminating the possibility that they were just getting used to the task. In the future the experiment should be conducted with more students, Full versions of the distros (not in safe mode), and randomization in the order of distros presented. However some things that should remain is the consistent hardware, and the variety in distros. This experiment could help further the ease of use within these distros in order to better accommodate the student demographic (ex Ubuntu making it easier to create files in their file manager.) THis would help significantly advance the likelihood that these tools are used. In a world where Operating systems and GUIS are dominated by one main actor, variety and competition will help further the market and force companies to advance and push forward faster than they currently are.